And that’s really all there is to it. Over the years since I originally tried hashing out this set of archetypes, I’ve been trying to account for exceptions to them — the sort of people who’d be perfect fits for a variety magic show, some sort of collaborative cabaret thing with many acts, but that don’t really borrow from any of the archetypes as defined here — and I can’t really think of many.

In fact, there are only two that really come to mind. The first is the Escape Artist, but even he still really feels like a Superman type, mixing about with either stunts (non-magical), deception (magical), or monte-based (mentalism). The second is the large-scale stage illusionist, but even then I think that judging the effects themselves pushes them towards one of several archetypes — if it’s a box effect, then Mechanic; if the effect is continually shown to be fair despite increasing scrutiny, then Scientist; if the effect is a feast for the eyes, then the Aesthetist. Even something like Two-Man Telepathy Acts or Seance Work can be judged according to the criteria of the Archetypes (Reader/Mental Magician and Bizarrist, respectively), because at that point it’s just format more than anything.

Where things get troublesome is whether or not these Archetypes are true by definition or not. If so, that means that magicians need to be paying strong attention to them. I already know of a few people who reject the concept out-of-hand, and I guess that’s fine, but I think where things get perilous is in the possibility of archetype-clashing.

Before we get to that, though, we probably ought to be clear about the existence of successful archetype hybrids. The Reader/Mental Magician is an obvious one, since those two aspects form the basis of what we consider to be the prototypical Mentalist. I still feel, for reasons outlined in the Reader Archetype, that they ought to be considered distinct since they incorporate very different dynamics, but they do also represent a perfect example of archetypes that can be combined in a way that doesn’t lessen the overall impact and unity of the performance.

Another obvious one would be the Jester/Clown. Keep in mind that the Clown is aiming for laughs in everything, and the Jester is aiming for the feeling of trickery and deception. Again, these things are not identical, hence the separation into two archetypes, but they are also not mutually exclusive, hence the ability to have a successful hybrid. In many ways, there are natural advantages to this sort of hybrid for either type, since the humour offered by the Clown side can be used to diffuse a lot of challenge brought on by the feeling of trickery, but at the same time, invoking the Jester themes of trickery and deceit can open up newer, and satisfyingly edgier, kinds of comedy.

So yeah, archetype hybridization is certainly possible. The question is whether or not any archetype can hybridize with any other type. That’s a lot muddier. Obviously, for the sake of open-mindedness, I don’t want to discount certain theoretical hybrids out of hand, but practice has shown that certain combinations are perilous. If, for instance, you’re a Jester type, it’s very difficult to maximize the power that can be attained through the Mutant/Charlatan/Reader/Mental Magician routes, since both the display of power, and a bit of suspension of disbelief in it, require a sincerity that the ironic tone of the Jester would be constantly undermining. That may be a viable artistic goal, of course, but it stands to reason that a Jester doing a Q&A act is not going to get the same reaction that a Mentalist doing a Q&A act will get. Now you’re at the point where, as a persona, you’re serving two warring masters.

Another example might be that of an Aesthete trying to broaden outside of their natural spheres of comfort into other ones. If the audience is conditioned to expect lots of highly visual magic out of you, then changing the dynamics to incorporate, say, a Scientist’s trick — something with a lot of test conditions and whatnot — is potentially quite problematic, as conflicts now arise. Whereas before they were passive and taking in data, now they’re being asked to question the data. Why weren’t they being asked to question it before? Before the implied contract with the audience seemed to be that I’d be getting to see a whole lot of magic. Now you’re asking me to sit here as all these conditions are being established. Why is that? I was willing to play along before. Why are you assuming I’m skeptical now?

To put it another way, it’s problematic in the same way that having love scenes between car chases is problematic. Again, of course such combinations and genre-mashups are theoretically possible, but the point is to figure out where the points of conflict might be and to minimize them. Consider that even if there’s success in making the love scenes as romantic as possible, and the action scenes as exciting and invigorating as possible, that roller-coaster ride can itself be too much. Usually, in movies, there’s downtime between high-emotion scenes just to let an audience catch their breath, and prepare themselves for the next plot development. Not only is denying people that exhausting, but it’s also potentially very distracting from the broader theme of the work, as now people are so caught up in every single individual moment that they cannot as easily appreciate the work on an abstract level.

Similarly, if you go up on-stage and try to do a tour-de-force of every subgenre of magic, then even if you succeed, the show as a single product can have the feeling of the soup, salad, entree and dessert all being thrown into a blender and served as a single course. We’re trying to give them a strong experience, and that requires clarity, and invoking too many different genres and themes can have a detrimental effect on that. For something like a variety show, that’s a bit different because the conceit of it is that there’ll be something for everybody and that you can even pick-and-choose which acts you like better. It seems counter-intuitive that we can go to a standup comedy night and see a bunch of different acts with different styles and approaches and still have a great time, but if one guy goes up and tried to use all that same different styles and approaches in his own act it’d probably be a mess.

And this comes back to a great phrasing of the situation by Tyler Erickson on the nature of showmanship. His way of saying it was “At your show, I want to know what it is I’m learning about you.” Changing up gears all the time can have a perpetual effect of reinforcing distance between you and the audience, because you’re constantly forcing them not just to reevaluate you, but to reevaluate the criteria that they were using to evaluate you. To put it bluntly, consider the following… The underlying message of the Aesthete is that “everything I do will be pretty to look at”. The underlying message of the Jester is that “everything I do will be a deception, and I bet you can’t figure it out.” The underlying message of the Scientist is that “everything I do will be totally convincing and there’s no proof to the contrary.” The underlying message of the Reader is “I will be inside your head and plucking out your most intimate thoughts. If we assume that a hybrid means a sincere invoking of each of the underlying messages of each archetype, then the underlying message of an Aesthete/Jester/Scientist/Reader is “I will be inside your head and plucking out your most intimate thoughts, but it will be a deception and I bet you can’t figure it out, but it will be totally convincing and there’s no proof to the contrary, and it will all be pretty to look at.” The more disparate and conflicting archetypes that get invoked, the more confused and muddled the underlying message.

In movies, that gives you something like Ebert’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which was, at best, an interesting experiment in style. Every now and then that thing can work, but it requires an audience ready for that, and in order to truly appreciate experiments in style, people have got to be intimately familiar with the usual styles and tropes and motifs and whatnot, and in magic, in its current state, we don’t really have that.

Yet. Maybe some day we’ll get to that point, I don’t know. But, at the same time, I don’t want to downplay the current state of affairs, which I find to be totally rich in possibility. There’s a great deal of satisfaction to be had, both for the artist and the audience, in taking any of these archetypes or compatible hybrids and running with them, and it doesn’t have to matter if some guy in a different archetype gets to have certain experiences that you don’t (and vice versa), any more than it doesn’t have to matter if you get different experiences reading William Shakespeare as you would William Faulkner, or looking at the paintings of Van Gogh, Picasso and Jackson Pollock.

And again, the real point in evaluating these archetypes isn’t to figure out which one, or which hybrid, you think you belong to, and then embrace it. Just because something is true to its archetype it doesn’t follow that it’s naturally entertaining, since that involves a whole lot more than just a blueprint. The map is not the territory, and shouldn’t be treated as such. The map is a guide, and similarly, these archetypes are just guides. They are a set of values of approaches to magic that you can use and learn from and build onto, they offer some answers as to what’s worked in the past, and they offer ways of looking at magic that are honest and compelling, and if they’re occasionally in conflict with each other, take comfort in knowing that it means there’s room for all sorts of creativity in the larger art form.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that, aside from linking you to this old cheat-sheet about the archetypes, where you’ll need to substitute “The Mutant” for “The Magus”, “The Aesthete” for “The Manipulator”, and “The Mental Magician” for “The Mentalist”. All the other stuff in there can remain as is.

Anyways, stop wasting time here at the olde blogge and enjoy your Holidays!

Out of all the titles for archetypes I’ve tried defining, this last one is amongst the least satisfying. In magic, the term “mechanic” is almost always synonymous with the “card mechanic”, meaning a cheat. However, the idea that I really wanted to convey was of a magician who treats his props as tools in order to accomplish a trick, and those tools could include cards, coins, rope, boxes for on-stage illusions, etc.

One could argue that every magician uses his props this way, but the defining point here is that the audience ends up seeing the magic like this as well. They see you pulling out cards to do a card trick, or pulling out coins to do a coin trick, and so on. The other archetypes don’t necessarily want things to be seen in quite this way. For them, the trick is itself a tool aimed at getting something deeper. The Aesthete, for instance, wants the tricks to communicate beauty, but the Allegorist wants the tricks to communicate a meaningful narrative, whereas the Scientist is aiming straight at the heart of a displayed and proven impossibility, and so on. To put it another way, the Mental Magician and the Reader, for instance, wouldn’t want to be seen handling their pieces of paper and pencils in the same way that a Mechanic is seen handling their cards and coins. For those two archetypes (and arguably for the Mutant and Charlatan as well) any props there are meant to seem incidental to the proceedings. They’re there to verify something, nothing more. Perish the thought that they’d be seen as tools to help accomplish the mystery.

Perhaps “Trickster” would be the way to go in terms of titles, but that suggests a tone that comes pretty close to the Jester archetype defined earlier, and the Mechanic doesn’t really have a set tone. Tyler Erickson once described this sort of magician as a “bringer of tricks”, which is a great description, although “Trickbringer” sounded a bit too Dungeons & Dragons for me, and this whole series of archetypes is already neck-deep in that level of geekery.

I’d tossed around the idea of “generalist” and “specialist” as potential avenues to explore (eg: “A generalist” vs. “A card specialist” or “A coin specialist”), but whereas there’s contrast between those ideas, there’s a similarity there as well which can group them all under the concept of the Mechanic, which is that the prop essentially feels like it deserves part of the credit for how the effect unfolds, and audiences (in general) understand this and accept this.

That last bit is important. To clarify, if the magician does cards across, and the audience reacts as if it’s a good card trick, and the magician essentially presents it in that way, then we’re talking about a Mechanic at work. If, on the other hand, the magician does cards across, but it’s done in the context of an act where similar effects happen, or else it’s framed in a way so as to point to a different power, now we’re messing about with other archetypes. I chose cards across for a reason that will hopefully become clear later, but perhaps a better example might be something like spongeballs, combined with the dime and penny, combined with Tommy Wonder’s Socked Coins. All three of those tricks feature the audience holding something each time, and the magic that happens in their hands varies — things change, multiply, or decrease in count, but each time it’s in their hands, and the influence by the magician is not constant. A performer who deliberately does this in order to create a sense that “the magic always happens in your hands” is actually pointing towards a power — either a Mutant or a Scientist could take advantage of this dynamic, essentially using the tricks to point at something deeper.

Another example might be taking a specialist like David Roth. He goes on Letterman and he does Winged Silver, then the barehanded Assembly, and then the Coin Flurry. Those tricks, linked in that way, essentially establish him as a Mechanic vis-a-vis coins. It’s possible that as things go on in that set and the magic becomes increasingly more visual, he’s becoming more and more of an Aesthete, but regardless, what ends up happening is that he can be seen as a coin guy. Imagine what might happen, though, if somebody else did coins across, and then bent a spoon, and then had a nail go up his nose, and so on? Now we’re seeing a relationship between effects based on metal, and this is something that can be capitalized upon by a Mutant type. Similarly, there’s a presentation for the barehanded coin assembly done by Al Schneider that basically turns it into a story. Somebody could take that, and then do other things in the set which also had stories, and use that to establish himself as more of an Allegorist.

The key point in all of this is the idea that tricks in a set can be used to establish a pattern, and that pattern can point towards an archetype. If the pattern is laughter, you’ve got a Clown; if the pattern is beauty, you’ve got an Aesthete; if the pattern is a tone of trickery and deceit, you’ve got the Jester; and so on. The Mechanic either has no pattern, or the pattern is essentially prop-based, which ultimately gives the prop some credit for the trick. If David Roth does Coins Across, people aren’t chomping at the bit to throw him a deck of cards and say “Do that again with these!” Similarly, if Bill Malone does Cards Across, people aren’t out searching for coins to make him repeat the effect with those. And yet, with a Mental Magician or a Reader or a Mutant, if you demonstrate something, people would be curious about some sort of escalation of that power (eg: “Ok, what am I thinking now?”). There’s a different sort of contract there between the audience and the performer that is the basis for the evolution of the performance.

An important thing to note, though, is that “different” doesn’t necessarily equal better. Sometimes it’s enough for the audience to get a good trick, and this is why I chose Cards Across as an example, because Bill Malone considers this, along with Card to Ceiling and the Invisible Deck, as one of the three strongest tricks he does. And yet, in that mishmash of effects, he’s not exactly pointing to a deeper power, but rather a general competence with his prop, and an understanding of how to use that prop to bring entertainment. Malone might be a tough example because he’s funny enough to be considered in the Clown Archetype, but what about guys like Michael Ammar or Doug Henning? You’re not going to their shows for laughs, or for stories, or with an expectation of manipulative beauty, or a sincere display of power. You’re going to their shows to see good tricks, and if that’s you’re looking for, that’s what you’ll get.

In fact, in this day and age, most regular people have that basic expectation for a magician that they want to go see or hire. If the tricks are good, he’s worth seeing. And if we think about the purpose of the magician being to implant memories of a magical event in their heads, notice that there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah, guys like Penn and Teller have gone far by pursuing the Jester approach, as has David Copperfield by pursuing the Superman approach, as has Mac King by pursuing the Clown approach, and so on, but if you look at guys like Ammar or Henning, or Mike Skinner, or Steve Cohen, or Doc Eason, or any number of performers, they delivered good shows by giving people good tricks. This is not to say that things like humour or beauty are going to go amiss if a performer leverages them, but it’s a much smaller sin if those are missing than if good, strong magic is absent.

This is why I took yesterday to set forth the Oogah-Boogah theory. Every now and then it’s possible to basically do a non-presentation for a trick, and it hits hard. Some tricks are inherently that powerful. We as magicians tend to that seemingly lazy approach to presentation, and we want to see presentational twists or variations simply because when a trick comes up for us to view, it’s one we’ve seen a million times already. But regular people don’t have that basis of comparison, and for them, most of the time it’s best to make sure that there’s no excess presentation keeping people from appreciating the trick itself. To put it another way, if this format didn’t have value, we wouldn’t have restaurant workers, who can rarely afford the luxury of edgy humour, long stories, enough space to do a proper manipulation act, enough time to give them the ten-minute-Tamarizian-method-cancelling-masterpiece, and so on.

In fact, unless we’re talking about one of those few magicians who has their permanent venue and can set your own artistic goals, then the ability to revert to a Mechanic is a valuable one, as it allows for flexibility in working situations. I could have the greatest five-minute story about three card monte in my act, but if I’m working on the street for a bunch of Asian tourists, all that talk is going to be more womp-womp-womp than Charlie Brown’s teacher giving a math lesson.

There are other advantages to taking this approach. Consider a Mutant whose focus is body-related magic. There’s some good stuff out there for this approach — Will Houston’s Freak, your average blister trick, needle-through-arm, etc. That said, it’s a bit of a gamble to put that high a filter on your repertoire. What happens if somebody does it on television, and Youtube tutorials sprout forth from the ground like weeds? What happens if you get a repeat audience, or if somebody approaches you to work a venue where that sort of material won’t fit? Now he’s in a position where his highly-specialized approach puts him in danger of having worked snatched up by a Mechanic. And there’s more — simply by forsaking the theatrical benefits of making claims to power, and being content to let people think of him as a bringer of tricks, the Mechanic now has the widest possible body of work to draw upon. Look at Don Alan work, and you’ll see powerful trick after powerful trick, and he can choose criteria that make for a commercial set (eg: “The trick must appeal to women.”) without having to worry about whether or not it needs to be cast aside because it isn’t true to the theatrical-reality of his power or whatever.

Of course, with this comes some risk of the Mechanic trivializing the territory of other Archetypes, if not magic itself, if he brings in too broad an array of material and doesn’t give each trick the care and attention it deserves — there are very few Mentalism effects that work well if they’re treated like the Chicago Opener.

Anyways, enough blabbing about that for now. Tomorrow, the wrap-up.

Before I get into defining this archetype, an anecdote.

Back in University, I was with a friend who was hardcore into Tarot cards, and she offered to do a personalized reading for me one night. Most people generally have questions about where they’re headed in life, and are happy to get some sort of personalized advice — regardless of whether it’s supernatural or not, most people want to know the right choices for the future, or even get some clarity as to their current path in life. Anyways, I was drinking and had nothing better else to do, and so I figured “What the hell?”

She gave me advice on a few things that are probably irrelevant here — suffice to say that they were personal in nature, and included one thing involving a specific person, and another thing involving a specific aspect of my study. Both were things that, at the time, I liked the idea of happening. In the end, both things did happen, with only minor deviations from the reading. When the first came true, I was surprised. When the second came true, that experience with my Tarot-card-reading friend became, in my mind, one of the most mind-blowing memories in my life.

Now, you’ve got to understand some things. I’m a religious and supernatural skeptic. I’ve learned how to perform magic feats that would trump any aspect of that Tarot card reading in terms of improbability or impossibility. I’m even more than happy to admit that anything that occurred in the aftermath of that reading was the result of self-fulfilling prophecy, to the point that it all happened because I wanted it to happen. Whatever. I’m not arguing in favour of the legitimacy of the power displayed or hinted at in a Tarot card reading. What I am arguing for is the potential for a profound experience to be had in a Tarot card reading. Many skeptics might not accept this, and that’s fine. All that’s needed is to understand it.

Let’s back away from this for a moment and look at something from Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People, where he says that the single most important word to a person in any language is… their name. If people were purely logical creatures, they would understand that their name is no more than a scribbled pattern on a piece of paper, and as such is no more of less special than a child’s doodle. Or, they would understand that their name is no more than a bunch of pixels on a computer screen, and as such is no more or less special than the pixels used to make the advertisement currently at the top-right-hand-side of this webpage. Or, they would understand that their name is no more than a bunch of sounds made by rumblings of the vocal chords, and as such is no more or less special than somebody humming. But take the most logical person in the world, and use their name with the subtext of honest warmth, feeling and friendliness, and they will respond in a way that belies logic.

What does this have to do with magic? Because, out of all the Archetypes, the Reader is the one that has the most potential to connect with their audience, because the Reader not only includes the person in their show, the Reader can make that person the show.

Again, if there are any skeptics reading this, trust me, I get it. Something like Pseudo-psychometry, for instance, where five items are placed in five envelopes and then mixed up, and the performer pulls out each item in turn, does an impromptu reading on it, and then returns it to the spectator… This sort of thing not only puts me to sleep, it sometimes lowers my estimation of somebody who buys into this as a mystery. The key here is to stop thinking like a magician in terms of methods and strategies, and to actually imagine a dream scenario where things are fully convincing. Maybe the item stays in the envelope, or maybe the person is doing this from another room over the phone, or maybe the person is blind and revealing aspects of me that are only possible to discern if they could see. Whatever. Build this up in your head as the most astonishing mystery possible, where you have no clue as to the method.

Now imagine that what makes the feat possible is something unique about you, and not just one thing, but three or four things, like your values or experiences that they couldn’t possibly have any idea about. In fact, let’s drop the Pseudo-Psychometry format and instead use this imagined scenario. You, right there reading this, you put the name of any person you knew as a child whom you miss terribly. They still be alive or they may still have passed on. Just think about their name. For the hell of it, try it out.

Now imagine me telling you not to worry, because wherever she is, Elizabeth is thinking of you as well.

99.9% of you reading this will think “Nice try, but Elizabeth wasn’t the person.” and that’s fair enough. If you were one of the 0.1%, though, even if you know rationally in your head that I just pulled that name out of my rear-end to make a point, that experience of seeing the computer-screen pixels that make up the word “Elizabeth” should still be somewhat eerie. If you want to be an effective performing magician, then you’ve got to be able to see things from that imagined standpoint. If you can, then instantly it ought to be clear that if you had a method that didn’t rely on pure chance, but in fact could be 100% all the time (thanks to, say, Chapter 1 in Corinda), now you’ve really got something. This is something that no card or coin or rope trick could ever compete with, because “Elizabeth” was something that didn’t even exist in the material world until you read that sentence. It was nice and safely locked away inside your head.

That’s what the Reader does, and that is why I think it’s worthwhile making a distinction between the Reader and the Mental Magician archetype. Put a blindfold on somebody and let them drive a car… ok, that’s a cool stunt. Roll a die and show that the number on the die matches something written on a piece of paper inside an envelope you were holding… ok, that’s a lucky coincidence. Even if you can correctly predict the outcome of outlandish events in a surprisingly specific way, that’s still a disconnected feat. Pluck some bit of personalized data from their head, and that’s just plain freaky.

This is one of the reasons why I cringe when I hear magicians say things like “mentalism can take your magic to the next level”, because it’s too much of an oversimplification. The idea is personalization of the experience. As an analogy, consider the difference between witnessing a Manipulation act up onstage, and witnessing a close-up magic trick that happens in your hands. Both can absolutely have their merits and strong points, but there’s a power to be had in the close-up trick that is palpable. Similarly, if you’re a mentalist doing a bunch of prediction effects or a clairvoyance demonstration, or if you’re a regular magician who just happens to be doing the Brainwave deck, that’s a neat thing, but it’s also disconnected from you. Some guy working one-on-one with you with a CT has a chance to create something a lot more powerful for you.

Of course, practicality demands that a performer needs to play to the audience at large — even if the image of twenty spongeballs jumping out of the spectator’s hand is a shocker, you can’t go around and do that for every individual in the theater. As such, some of the Mental Magician’s feats make sense, since in a weird way everybody is brought together as a witness to this extraordinary and unlikely event. Even a Reader who does something like a Question and Answer Act or Pseudo Psychometry or Osterlind’s “Thought Scan” (or whatever) really only has the chance to reach its full potential as a powerful experience for the people whose minds are read. Everybody else can always yell “Stooge!”, so it behooves the Reader to at least ensure that some fairness of spectator choice is involved, even if such overproving would be superfluous for the people who actually are chosen, and would be totally out of place in a one-on-one scenario.

Now, one criticism that’s easy to make about the notion of dividing up performing personas into archetypes is the idea that it’s stupid to try to push magicians into boxes, that unique individuals reject that sort of fascist categorization. The only answer I can make to this is that this isn’t what defining archetypes is about, and of course it’s possible to be the sort of the performer that draws bits and pieces from a variety of blueprints.

The Reader is probably the best example of this type, since there are very few performers who fit solely into this category, and those that do are probably “psychics” that advertise in the classifieds section and who read your fortune with Tarot cards or whatnot, or else people like my friend who dabbled in the field. Usually what we see is a Reader/Mental Magician hybrid — according to my working definitions, anyway, since most Mentalists wouldn’t see the distinction. Where

How powerful is it, potentially? It’s an interesting fact that your average person considers themselves to be of above-average intelligence, because it speaks to how deluded and egotistical we can be as a species. Similarly, if I look at you and say “Every now and then you get frustrated with people because they don’t get just how smart your ideas are” or whatever, that’s something that almost everybody can identify with, and yet the way that they identify with it makes it seem like a personalized observation.

And even if you’re not the one being read, there’s still potential for the experience to be compelling. First, if you get something like Pseudo Psychometry done with convincing test conditions, that’s really impressive (if perhaps a violation of what Pseudo Psychometry is all about, but whatever). However, imagine that some hot girl that you think you might want to bang gets invited up onstage, and the performer starts revealing personalizing information about her, that’s also pretty interesting. And, if the performer were to give her the same nonsense “Every now and then you get frustrated with people because they don’t get just how smart your ideas are”, and she responds warmly to that, it’s possible you might end up overlooking the manipulative ambiguity in such a reading, and instead be curious as to what her ideas actually are. If we go beyond Carnegie’s major philosophy that people are most interested in themselves, after that, as Fitzkee and Ortiz correctly identified, what people are most interested in are other people.

Anyways, hopefully at this point it’s clear why I make a distinction between the two. I’ve seen more than a few mentalism shows where the performer handled the two situations a little too identically. For something like Clairvoyance or Future Sight or whatever, then yeah, it may help to heighten the specific test conditions, because people don’t know what’s going on inside your head, to see if it’s like Daredevil’s sonar or Spider-man’s Spider Sense. Handling these things in terms of individual feats and playing them up as a traditional magician might makes a lot of sense. The Reader, though, has a lot more to gain by not constantly reminding people just how impressive the conditions surrounding the feat are, since the feat alone is absolutely mind-blowing.

Went back and forth between “The Mentalist” and “The Mental Magician”, and settled on the latter since the former seems to already have plenty of accepted context for its definition, whereas the latter is a bit more ambiguous. I should also point out that what most people would call a “Mentalist”, I’ve actually divided into two separate archetypes, “The Mental Magician” and “The Reader”, for reasons which will hopefully become clear, despite seeming like an arbitrary distinction at the moment.

Anyways, the Mental Magician is a fairly straightforward archetype — he does a show that basically revolves around future sight, clairvoyance, ESP, the odd bit of telekinetics, and at times advanced calculation and memory feats, and every now and then demonstrations of strength and speed. Pretty much every power that’s associated with your prototypical Mentalist applies here except for telepathy and suggestion, which we’ll get to tomorrow when discussing the Reader (once more, along with justifications for the distinction).

Where the Mental Magician distinguishes himself from most of the other archetypes is the general sense that all magic that pours out of him comes from his mind. If things were different a while ago then he’d probably (along with the Reader) be considered a subset of the greater Mutant Archetype, but there’s been some interesting developments in the 20th Century, particularly in the realm of skepticism, that have caused some interesting shifts in the way that we view Mentalists. For instance, there’s the concept of the disclaimer. If a regular magician who does sponge balls and the Ambitious Card were to open his show by saying “By the way, before I begin any of this, I want to make it clear that I do not have any real magical powers.” or whatnot, he’d either get laughed out of the room, or else have a really insulting effect on an intelligent audience which assumes that much anyway. Mentalists, however, are dealing with a very interesting set of powers, because they are essentially demonstrations of controlled phenomena that we’ve all witnessed.

We’ve all had that moment where we felt like we knew what was going to happen before it actually did, or had moments of deja-vu, or felt like we knew what other people were thinking, or felt like other people could read us like a book, or had a strange moment of insight, or felt extra powerful or quick or aware (eg: athletes being “in the zone”), and so on. Usually this is just a question of people trying to rationalize a recognition of coincidence or a moment of adrenaline, but regardless, it’s eerie. What the Mentalist seems to offer is a message saying that all of these phenomena can in fact be tamed and controlled and put to focused use.

This is ultimately where things get ethically dicey, and why disclaimers might make sense for the Mentalist in a way that they wouldn’t make sense for a Clown or Jester. After all, if you’ve guessed correctly at the Roulette wheel once, and gotten a bit of a rush out of that, then it would follow that you’d feel an emotional response in the presence of somebody else who seemed to be luckier. If that person bottled and openly sold his apparent source of luck, he’d quickly be termed a snake oil salesman. A Mentalist risks being associated with that, although rather than having snake oil, he is the snake oil, and whereas a regular drink could be scientifically analyzed to be shown to be identical with something known to have no power-giving properties, it’s somewhat hard to prove that somebody doesn’t have ESP powers, without resorting to the violent (albeit humourous) extreme of walking up to a supposed Psychic, slapping them across the face, and then saying “Betcha didn’t see that coming, did ya!”

Avoiding that latter situation, or even tamer versions of it (such as getting the James Randi fanboys hounding you), is probably the major reason for the disclaimer. The powers exhibited by a Mentalist are so compelling, and the tone is usually devoid of trickery, that throwing a disclaimer in there seems to be the safest way of avoiding all that added baggage. Frankly, I do agree with the cynical observations on disclaimers made by others. Andrew Gerard said that most of the Mentalists out there who use disclaimers are basically wasting everybody’s time, because their effects aren’t compelling and convincing enough to warrant them. Another (I believe it was Darwin Ortiz in Strong Magic, but it’s been a while and I’m not sure) said that most of the Mentalists who use disclaimers secretly hope that audiences forget them anyway. Whit Haydn even made the point that disclaimers in a Mentalism show makes for poor theater. I wouldn’t be surprised that some Mentalists who use them probably do so as a cursory gesture to avoid public prosecution by skeptics, whereas everything they did in their subtext was to deliberately try to arouse belief.

Personally, I’m less interested in all of that, and more interested in the dynamic that led to it. Frankly, I could see how somebody who was both artistically and ethically sound, and who was able to perform amazing feats under test conditions, might want to use a disclaimer, if only because it has the potential to add an extra dimension of mystery to the proceedings. The more ambiguous, I’d generally say, the better, so that you don’t have to get bogged down in a game of semantics about how it is you’re able to do what you’re able to do. But, if we go along with the idea Derren Brown put out that people are just as fascinated (if not more) by the cause of the magic than they are the magic itself, then it follows that a well-done disclaimer could make that conversation even more interesting. That said, it’s possible to put out an artless disclaimer, and it ought to be analyzed and scripted in such a manner as to be a positive contribution to the show, rather than just an asterisk for it.

But getting back to the Mental Magician, another thing that’s worth looking at is the concept of the limits of the power. I’d say that any would-be Mutant archetypes out there ought to consider how many of the most prominent Mentalists approach their idea of power. Banachek, for instance, has a way to explain why he’s unable to predict the outcome for a lottery in real-life, while also being able to predict the outcome for a simulated lottery in a show, and ultimately the details that make that happen are related to his approach to defining his power. One doesn’t have to go so far as to do this explicitly and in a slide-show explaining all this in point-form, but having a personal understanding for the limits of the power can be really helpful in keeping things clear, if only to avoid the “What am I thinking now, smart guy?” question.

Another way to deal with the limits of power, though, is to deliberately avoid things that have the potential for great social impact (again, like predicting the outcome of a lottery, or else avoiding a headline prediction), by downplaying the Yin of the effect. A quick recap: Yin equals nature of the effect, Yang equals conviction in the effect, both together determine total strength of the effect.

Say somebody shuffles the deck, and deals off a bunch of cards, and you pass your hand over them, and correctly get the colours of them (not the exact identities, but just the colours), then you’ve just demonstrated something pretty freaky, and yet only a super-imaginative person is going to make the leap to thinking that you now know what his PIN code is. Technically they’re the same general sort of thing (clairvoyance (although for the PIN code you’d need to be clairvoyant about a bit of data on a remote computer, but whatever)), but there’s something inherent in the scope of the card effect that, while mysterious, doesn’t force you to have to answer for effects of greater scope. Of course, all things being equal, being able to determine somebody PIN code would be much stronger in Yin, but not being able to do that effect with proper Yang would ruin the whole thing.

Another example… you had a moment of insight and you hallucinated an image of a beautiful girl reading out a word. You write down that word. You then throw out a bunch of newspapers, and they get torn up into pieces by a bunch of people, and then a beautiful girl is chosen and she goes up and grabs one of the pieces, and then reads it out, and you show that the word matches… assuming you can effectively disprove stooge, that’s a strong effect, but even if she read out the word “disaster” in a headline that in total said “Airline disaster in the Midwest” or whatever, nobody but a very imaginative person would think that you could have predicted that, and even if they expressed as much, you could probably say “If I could do that, I’d have won the lottery and retired from performing.” and it’d likely be an acceptable response that addressed a concern while still retaining mystery.

There are other things in the previous two examples to consider as well, so as to preserve mystery while avoiding troublesome implications, and they are essentially that of details pertaining to the moment. A wise performer realizes how to leverage, or even create, details that explain how he’s able to do what he does. Maybe he needs to be close to the person. Maybe he needs a moment of silence. Maybe he needs physical contact with a thing. Maybe it only works with guys. Whatever. Choose those details, make them plausible, and you’ve got some great theater to play with.

To put it in a more obvious way, notice how most Mentalists approach the concept of levitations, animations and bends. Consider that a magician, when approaching a levitation or animation, would either want to fly like Copperfield, or else have a ball dance through the air (a la Zombie Ball). Mentalists, however, aim low, as if they’re just coming into an understanding of their powers. There’s an inherent plausibility to this. An ostentatious display of power would invite either real-life newspapers to write stories about the person, or else would lead governments to kidnap the guy to dissect him in a laboratory. If, however, a person were just discovering their power, then it would make sense why they’d remain under the radar. Of course, that requires performers making displays of power that aren’t too strong, and yet are still inherently mysterious. This is a delicate balance — correctly predicting a 1 in 3 chance could be written off as luck (hence lack in mystery, somewhat), but correctly predicting a 1 in 1000 chance could be written off as a trick (seemingly too deep into the realm of magicians’ impossibilities). Done right, though, this can create an impression that lasts outside of the theatrical context, to the point that Uri Gellar will get in the news for making a mere spoon bend, whereas David Copperfield wouldn’t despite making the entire Statue of Liberty disappear.

The thing to keep in mind is that there are people in the audience who are both willing and able to interpret things in this way. There’s a DVD of Richard Osterlind where he’s doing an ESP divination, and the idea was to replicate the way an actual ESP experiment might work. He invited Janel to help him out. Her job was to think of the ESP card, and his was to write down what she was sending him. She asked a question along the lines of “Do you want me to think of the word, or of the picture?”

From the point of view of methodology, of course there’s no difference. From the point of view of the performer’s power? The difference is enormous. Arguably, one can go too far, of course, in terms of explicitly defining powers to the audience, and Osterlind himself says that sometimes you just want to be that guy who seems to be able to do cool stuff with his brain, to the point that he rejects Derren Brown’s approach to trying to define the abilities in terms of NLP or whatnot. That said, even Osterlind says that for things like a headline prediction, you want to be really careful about what it is that you’re saying your power is able to do.

There’s more to say about this, but a lot of it is in relation (and contrast) to the archetype of the Reader, which we’ll cover next.

Believe me, this wasn’t the first choice for this archetype, but it was the best I could do on deadline. It’ll be a bit annoying because I’ve already written a whole lot about “Superhero”-theory in terms of how it can apply to a magician’s persona, so much of this may be repetitive for long-time readers of the olde blogge (all seven of you), as well as potentially confusing since yesterday’s archetype was The Superman.

To summarize, while The Superman can do anything, the Mutant is a creature with a specific power. Hailing to the X-Men comics and similar, he has a special ability of some sort, and he explores it through his performances.

It’s a bit troublesome to look at successful current examples of this archetype, as there aren’t all that many, and of the ones who really succeed at exploring their material in terms of power, most of them are mentalists. That said, even though this is an experimental archetype being offered, I truly believe in its potential.

Some defining characteristics…

* The power displayed needs to be sustainable. It needs to be duplicable in a variety of circumstances with a variety of relevant objects, offer the necessary range of proofs and able to survive scrutiny. It also can’t be so outlandish that it would have an impact outside the show. In other words, you don’t want to change $1 into $100, and then have to deal with the uncomfortable situation of having to answer why, with a power like that, you’re not collapsing world economies and such. This doesn’t mean that you have to abandon that effect, but rather incorporate it in a way that’s more sustainable, either by offering it as an example of a temporary hallucination, or perhaps hypnosis, or perhaps as a signal of the magic moment for something else (such as having a $1 switch places with a $100 bill).

* The range of power needs to be clear. The Mutant’s performance is essentially a showcase for his power, and that power pretty much becomes a perceivable entity, if not a character all of its own. Obviously, offering to show what it can do is easy enough… but what about explaining what it can’t do? That can be compelling as well. Mentalists have known this for a while thanks to people taking Chan Canasta’s ideas of failures paradoxically giving credibility to the performer, and running with it. Say you’ve got two people, and they’re each thinking of a card. The person who’s more skeptical might only be able to communicate the colour and suit of the card, whereas the person who’s more of a believer might be able to transmit everything about the card. Consider that the differences here are purely theatrical — the method for both situations can be exactly the same. As for how this could apply to the Mutant… imagine you’ve got this strange ability to make things penetrate through other things, so long as they’re small. You do it with a penny through a table, it works. You do it with a nickel through a table, it works. People get curious, so you do it with a signed quarter, it works. But when somebody pulls out a dollar bill, it doesn’t work. In fact, it actually gets stuck in the table.

* The power displayed needs to have enough potential to offer a variety of effects and routines. This is essentially to escape the trappings of offering a set or routine that hits the same note too many times. Consider somebody like Nightcrawler, who is capable of teleporting from one place to another. That’s already pretty cool, but in the comics, he’s explored it even further, including as a combat tactic — not just in the obvious way of teleporting behind somebody and knocking the from behind, but actually grabbing them and teleporting them with him around the room, which disorients them to the point of getting dizzy or even fainting, which means that he can win a fight, with his power, without throwing a single punch. Of course, since necessity is the mother of invention, Nightcrawler’s need to be able to survive combat makes adapting his power to the situation easy. What to do for just plain performance magic? This is a bit tougher. The best way to handle this is probably found in the following guideline, which is that…

* The power probably doesn’t shouldn’t be too specific. If the cause of the magic is too specific, that can have a detrimental impact on the range of effects open to you. It might be better to say something like “I’ve been messing around with metal.” or “I’ve got this weird relationship with fire.” What’s more, following up on an idea offered in Henning Nelms’ Magic and Showmanship, it’s not always that the higher the claim, the higher the proof needed to support the claim. Sometimes, it’s that the more specific the claim is, the more specific the proof needs to be. In general, unless you’re able to field a variety of questions adeptly, the less said, the better. Obviously it helps to have a crystal clear idea in your head about the nature and range of your powers, but if you can avoid saying it specifically, people ought to be able to pick up on your internal logic and fill in the blanks themselves.

* Irony of tone needs to be handled very delicately. We’re not engaging in pure charlatanry here, but you don’t want to undermine what you’re doing in the same way a Jester or Clown might. The Mutant essentially believes that the power has entertainment value if taken seriously, and uses that as the starting point from which to explore things. On a general level, this is one reason why it’s somewhat hazardous to mix magic and mentalism, since magic (usually) has a tone of trickery and shenanigans, whereas mentalism (usually) has a tone of a display of power that’s serious (if not somber, to quote a Derren Brown distinction). The same thing ought to apply here. Too much hinting that it’s all tricks basically means that your power is shtick, and to be taken just as seriously (or not, as the case may be) as any other magician’s tricks. This brings up a funny thing that David Blaine once said, when somebody asked how he can do what he does — he looks nervous, glances about, and says “Uh, it’s just a trick.” That’s intensely clever.

* Do not rely solely on the nature of the power to be entertaining. Yeah, it’s compelling, but a good rule of thumb that’ll be covered in the Round-up for this series is that “Just because you’re staying true to an archetype, it doesn’t follow that you’re entertaining anybody.” Remember, you’re a character, and that means all sorts of things, some of which have nothing to do with magic. You’ve got to be a person, and again, usually, the less explicitly said about your power, the better.

There are quite a few possibilities for sustainable powers in the magic realm. Things like the following have potential for both range and sustainability. “I’ve been messing about with metal/wood/paper.” “I’ve been testing my pain threshold with fire.” “Sometimes I can heal things if they’re not destroyed too badly.” “None of this is real, it’s just an image I’m planting in your head.” “I can hide some things within other things.” “If I touch something enough, something weird sometimes happens.” Michael Ammar offered some other interesting ideas on the recent Paul Harris DVD set. Now, it’s been a while since I watched them in Minnesota, so some of this will be paraphrased, but the idea was essentially to say something like “Sometimes I get these voices. Usually I drink in order to quell them, but for tonight I’m remaining perfectly sober, and we’re just going to see what happens.” I don’t know about you, but to me that’s some great fodder for a show (particularly if you like to drink). He mentioned in that interview that he thought that a performer who could do this successfully, even if it was a really specific power, if he could do that power under any circumstance, he’d be world-famous.

He also mentioned that it was tough. There’s a commitment here that’d be very difficult to follow, and perhaps that’s why we’ve only really seen it amongst the mentalists, who are playing in a realm that a lot of people believe in already. That said, I’m convinced there’s something here…

The notion here is pretty simple. Think of performance venues as being on a scale, from intimiate close-up on one end to massive huge spectacles on the other end. Why produce a coin when you can produce a Buick? Why vanish a ball when you can vanish an elephant? Why float an inch of the ground when you can soar through the air?

The dominant characteristic of the Superman is that if we think of a magic trick as an event, we might as well make that event as massive and extreme as possible.

The benefits to this are pretty obvious. Assuming that a major part of the power of magic is the memory of the experience, then adding near-hyperbolic details to that memory is a great way to help ensure longetivity, and the more people are there to share it, the more validated that memory becomes. Make things in your illusion bigger, brighter, louder, more dangerous, etc. than the other guy’s, then all other things being equal you’ll be remembered and he’ll be forgotten. Obviously, you’ll want the trick to be good, and for any exaggeration of qualities to not enter the realm of the unintentionally ridiculous, but assuming you can be disciplined in your artistic choices, then bigger really is sometimes better.

And don’t underestimate the power of spectacle. It has a way of uniting and prioritizing tricks that might seem strange in a close-up set. There’s no magic in a straitjacket escape, for instance, but there’s a way that can close a show that Twisting the Aces never will be able to, even though TTA has a proper illusion of impossibility. Sometimes the strength of a routine has little (or nothing) to do with the strenght of the magic in the routine. The Superman understands this, and reprioritizes appropriately.

That said, there are certain defining characteristics of a prototypical Superman trick. You’ll want the trick to be clear, either in terms of effect or else in terms of objective. You’ll pretty much be forced to call your shot, since a big part of a spectacle is organizing to have a big crowd there to witness it, and for that you need a draw, something to hook their interest. That means losing much of the surprise factor, which can be an ally in most magic tricks.

It also stands to reason that a huge part of enjoying the routine is that you’ve got to enjoy the way the routine unfolds. That’s generally a given in most tricks, but it’s particularly important for the Superman. It’s not enough for there to be chuckles, but there must also be thrills, chills, surprises, tension, etc.

It’ll also need to either be incomparable, or else it must trump what’s been done before. This last one is difficult, because it’s too easy to throw so many added features into a traditional routine that it ends up being a parody of the entire process. Sometimes it gets to the point that the only way to trump what’s been done before is to take a completely different approach to it. There was no way, for instance, that David Blaine was going to be able to beat Copperfield’s Flying Illusion in terms of scale (and perhaps not even artistry), and so he took the wise approach of instead doing the wandering Shaman approach, which allowed him to use media in an unconventional way to bolster the power of close-up tricks. Criss Angel, in turn, was able to find a happier marriage between the two, by incorporating stage-style tricks with reality television techniques. One doesn’t have to be a fan of Angel (and believe me, I’m anything but a fan of his) in order to appreciate and respect what he’s accomplished through that medium, and how he’s been pretty imaginative in terms of how he’s attacked the same things this archetype goes for.

Some other potential dangers… distance and medium can have a diluting impact on the way tricks are viewed. The Superman is all about maximizing Yin in an effect, and every now and then this means sacrifices in Yang (conviction). Sometimes vanishing a penny right under their nose has a way of having more power than vanishing an elephant up onstage. And if distance is problematic, then media is doubly-so, because now there are things like editing and special effects that can be seen as rational and reasonable explanations for what’s being seen. Hollywood movies may be lame, narratively, but the things that can be accomplished through special effects are spectacular, and getting more so by the year. That said, if the Superman takes his tricks live and pulls them off deceptively and entertainingly, he’s in a position to compete with them in a compelling way that few others can.

One other potential hazard is the expectation to hit home runs every time a new trick starts. Whit Haydn likes to echo [[GUY'S POINT]] that you can only whack them over the head so many times, and from time to time, if only to break up the tone of constant climax, it helps to be able to switch things up in terms of the dynamics, either by adding humour or sentimentality or pretty much any dynamic that’s both entertaining and yet in stark contrast to the rest of the show. Copperfield and Angel are both very good with this. Copperfield has his Grandpa Aces which offers many positive contributions to his show (good trick, change of tone, increases prestige, etc.), and Angel, in many of his episodes of Mindfreak, will have a feature illusion at the end, but will also have the odd trick to break things up and add texture to what would otherwise be an experience that would otherwise be made up entirely of either that feature trick, or else build-up to that feature trick.

If you think of the great tricks in history, many of them are tricks that play enormous. Things like Penn and Teller performing the Bullet Catch, Houdini escaping his straitjacket while upside-down, and Copperfield’s Flying illusion are milestones for the art. I have no delusions that any trick I do, no matter how well I perform it, will ever come close to imprinting itself upon the world collective consciousness in a way that those tricks will. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to take advantage of the features of my performing style, but I’m also not kidding myself.

Part of the difficulty in trying to come to any conclusive definition about the definition of “magic” performance is that, on the one hand, you want to point towards magic as being the demonstration of impossibilities and mysteries and such, but on the other, we’ve got to take into account the fact that something like Ricky Jay or John Scarne doing a gambling demonstration has the feel of a magic show, even though there’s no “magic” really being claimed (let alone shown). Maybe this is all Erdnase’s fault, I dunno. This is one reason why back when I was more indulgent in the semantics of this whole thing I wanted to call what we do The Theater of Mysteries, since it opened the door up for pretty much any feat being done in real-time that caused people to wonder either about the nature of the feat itself, or the machinations that made the feat possible.

That meant including gambling demonstrations of pretty much any sort, even those that expose different techniques. John Scarne was able to help build his legend because he was called in to do gambling demonstrations for GIs who were regular targets for cheats. To hear the way it’s talked about in Scarne on Dice, if you’re a soldier, then you’re in training, you’re bored and don’t have a lot of entertainment options, and gambling at cards is a fun way to pass the time. That makes you easy pickings. At the time, it was a big enough problem that somebody in the brass saw what it was that Scarne could do, and they wanted to bring him in simply to educate the soldiers about the hazards of playing with strangers. I don’t know if the genre itself was born at that point, but whatever, the point is that it’s a viable situation.

This is one reason why magicians need to get beyond this idea that exposure of any sort is bad and detrimental and gives cancer to puppies, etc. I understand the feeling, as I used to feel the same way, but if you think about it, the situation that led to Scarne exposing gambling cheating techniques makes a ton of sense. If people are out there defrauding other people, it is not only reasonable for people to want to protect themselves, it’s reasonable to assume that there are those who’ll happily teach them those tools for protection. Whether it’s offered as entertainment, or if he lucked into it because he was actually a magician who was halfway conversant with cheating techniques, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Magicians have used, and currently use, techniques that shoplifters and pickpockets have used. Does it make sense for them to complain if a store teaches their clerks how to spot these techniques so as to make sure people don’t walk off with merchandice? Of course not. The same applies here. Anybody complaining about exposure in a gambling demonstration is missing the point. It’s got nothing to do with magicians.

Of course, even if it’s acceptable for somebody to use exposure as a presentational premise in a gambling demonstration, you’re not ironclad-bound to the idea. Plenty of people have come up with dodges so that they can do gambling-themed material that doesn’t read like “magic”, without actually giving away techniques. Others still have managed to use a gambling demonstration as a part of their set, which includes other tricks that have a more magical feel to them. It’s an interesting situation we find ourselves in as magicians, since we might end up in any number of performance venues, some which demand a full act, some which only have space for a single routine, some which are totally impromptu and where we can set our own rules as we go along.

One interesting thing about this particular archetype is that, out of all of them, this is the only one that’s bound to a prop. This makes for a really interesting dynamic. If you don’t like the baggage that’s normally associated with magicians, you don’t have to deal with it — in other words, even though you’re doing impressive and mysterious feats with great surprises in real-time under close scrutiny and with aspects of deception involve, elements that are essentially prevalent in any traditional magic show, you don’t need to take on that mantle if you don’t want to.

If there is a downside — or perhaps, more accurately, a real challenge — it’s that there’s no way to fake talent. I mean, you could do a pseudo-center deal if you want, but now you’re back in magician territory, offering the illusion of something rather than the real deal. Rather than making that silly joke about how nobody wants to play cards with you, you’ve actually got to be somebody that nobody would really want to play cards with. Regular audiences might not know the difference off-hand, but people in the know definitely know a credible cardsharp who can sit with fast company, versus somebody who’d get laughed out of a weekly poker game, and that credibility is a big part of what sells you as a person worth watching.

This means research in a way that many magicians are allergic to. Steve Forte is pretty much considered the pinnacle of this sort of expert handling of cards. In actuality, if you’re going to dive into this Archetype full throttle, then emulating Forte is just the beginning. It takes specific cahones to move in a game, and that includes not just technical competence but the ability to properly shade something. Sleight of hand is perhaps the most obvious way to demonstrate ability in this regard, but how are you with shiners, readers, sending signals, etc.? Keep in mind that the legitimate card cheat wants two things. First, to win, and that means that anything that reliably gets the money is fair game. Second, to not get caught, and that means that the sorts of feats that you’d show in a magic show are probably completely different from what you’re going to do in a card game, because not only do you not want credit for winning in a game, you don’t even want to think that anything deserves credit other than the random chance of the cards being dealt, or perhaps the basic (and commonly-understood) skill at playing the game, such as what you’d see in a Poker Stars tournament.

If there is a pitfall to the whole gambling-demonstration thing, it’s that it’s not too difficult to fall into a rut. “Watch me blow your mind with my chops” can get old pretty fast, and if you’re trying to have a well-rounded and entertaining show, that might mean making sure that there’s a variety not just of “effects” (for lack of a better term) but also dynamics. Are you interacting with people? Are you accepting a challenge? Are you educating them in an entertaining manner? Are you allowing for the possibility of tension and suspense? Are you hitting 100% of the time or are you allowing misses? Are you opening, building and closing the way a competent showman would? Are you being funny, serious, tricky, etc.? Keep in mind that if you’re really embracing this archetype, you’re already taking a bit of a hit by sticking to the same prop, the same theme, and a relatively narrow range of powers. Good showmen can overcome these challenges, of course, but these challenges are real and must be overcome.

It’s also worth considering study of this archetype even if you’ve got no interest in playing it. The cardsharp needs to function under really specific situations, and all the cover and misdirection and strategies need to fit it perfectly — one movement out of place and you’re uninvited from the card table. Of course, it’s also easy to glorify this approach to card handling too much, to the extent that Hugard bemoaned some of the negative effects brought on by Erdnase. If you think about it, it makes sense. The card guy sits at his spot with little to no suspicion, can bide his time, not really interacting with anybody, wait for his moment, and happily claim no credit once he rakes the chips in, whereupon if anybody is suspicious of him, it’s too late.

That sort of situation favours certain strategies. Adopting those same strategies within something geared more towards magic (even if it’s just card tricks) is troublesome. Erdnase brought some great ideas with regards to sleight-of-hand, but sleight-of-hand can’t solve everything.

It also helps to highlight just how many opportunities there are that exist for regular magicians. The interactive factor alone allows for new choreographies and strategies that wouldn’t be there for a person who just sits still and remains as a static point of focus. Of course, it’s not a given that a Cardsharp type must eschew all the presentational strategies open to magicians — on the contrary, a bit of dabbling about in traditional magic would probably benefit most Cardsharps just so that they can explore the different dynamics available if they switch things up. That said, if you’re advertising yourself as an apple, and you give people a delicious orange, people who are just happy to have fruit will be satisfied, but those there to get an apple won’t be. This is one reason why I detest the line “People never want to play cards with me!” stated all-too-often by guys who can do a few good card tricks. Yeah, people who don’t know the difference, don’t… well, know the difference. People who do will resent having their time wasted.

So yeah, again, some challenges to overcome. If you succeed, though? Well, you’ve got an act that packs flat and plays flexible, involving a very commercial topic, and that won’t insult anybody’s intelligence by involving any pretenses of magic if you don’t want it to. You’ve also got a demonstrable power that’s totally sustainable, which means that any reputation you get off it is completely legitimate without any pretense of trickery. That’s pretty good stuff.

It’s probably a stretch to be including this as an archetype in the first place, but I’m going to do it anyway. Very quickly, I want to make a distinction between something that Whit Haydn has termed “The Theater of Charlatanry”, and a bona fide Charlatan. Haydn, when talking about ToC, is basically talking about a show where the performer takes on a role where the aim is to inspire and/or prove belief in his powers, but the performer is no more a real charlatan than Anthony Hopkins really is a mass murderer who eats people. It may be convincing, but in the end it’s still entertainment.

That’s the ToC. For this, though, I’m talking about a pure Charlatan. The kind that pisses off James Randi and his fan club. The type that wants nothing more than to part you with your cash by pretending to talk to your dead parents. The type that ranges from Uri Gellar on the tame end to that lady who gives false hope to parents of a missing child by trying to pick up psychic resonances from the kid’s teddy bear.

Why would I include such an archetype? Because, in the end, this whole thing about the archetypes isn’t so much to offer strict roles for people to follow, but rather as models of study, to pick the odd thing from. After all, shell game hustlers have probably screwed nice people out of their rent money, but that doesn’t mean performers need to stop doing the shell game. I think a similar dynamic is in play for people who would be in what Haydn terms the Theater of Charlatanry, in terms of being able to study these guys in order to create a more compelling theatrical experience.

Insofar as ethics are concerned, the olde blogge’s official position is this — no harm, no foul. If you’re not taking advantage of anybody and if it’s all in the name of entertainment, nothing’s off-limits. That might seem innocuous enough, but I really mean it when I say nothing is off-limits. That means the Andy Kaufman-like territory where everybody is trying to figure out if you’re serious or not with whatever outlandish statements or claims you’re making. Truth be told, not only is that sort of thing permitted, it’s actually desireable, particularly for people who’ve grown numb with the mundane. I think that a lot of people feel Kaufman is overrated simply because rebelling against convention has an easily-gained novelty to it, but I personally think that this sort of thing is extremely intellectually satisfying, because it brings out into the open a question that we frequently consider, that of how much of what we do for each other is a lie. Once that becomes the premise for the interaction, it can be really fun territory to explore.

This is also where pro wrestling can actually be an interesting study. Hear me out. If you don’t know kayfabe, it’s a pro wrestling term that’s used to describe what happens when a pro wrestler stays in character even outside of the ring (or the weekly televised show, whatever). It’s what keeps wrestling interesting even when people know it’s fake. It’s a difficult thing keeping people engaged when you’ve got two grown men who feel that the best way to air their differences is to wriggle their way into some tights and miss each other with punches. What holds it all together isn’t just acting, but this sort of contract of make-belief that everybody engages in, and while one way to break that contract is to put on a poor showing in the ring, the other way is to let the public see you, outside the ring, not actually hating on the guy who made you froth at the mouth when you were inside the ring.

So sum up, if you hate Hulk Hogan inside the ring, and then you have an interview outside the ring, and somebody asks you how you feel about Hogan, if you keep character and talk about how much you hate him, you’re maintaining kayfabe. On the other hand, talk about how much you like working with him and how professional he is in the ring — in other words, being honest — and you break kayfabe.

Wrestling’s a fascinating study in that sense, because they’ve found that not only are people capable of appreciating what they see on those two levels, but they like the notion. This has led to things like shoots (wrestlers who seem to break kayfabe in the middle of a show against the wishes of the organization) and even worked shoots (wrestlers who break kayfabe with the organization’s permission).

I’m going to stop going down that rabbit hole though, because the point here is to see its potential for the Charlatan, as it offers a way to essentially play the character in an interesting (yet still socially acceptable) way.

Now, there’s a question of how all of this stuff applies to the Charlatan, as opposed to magicians in general. After all, isn’t all magic a lie at some point?

The key to answering this is to shift the perception of what the real illusion is in a magic show. If you’re presenting what you do as an illusion, then you’re a magician. If you’re presenting yourself as the illusion, now you’re entering into Charlatan territory, because now not only must you avoid having the stuff you do be seen as tricks, or accomplished via trickery, now you can’t even use the term “trick”, or even let yourself be called “a magician”. That sort of thing is an insult. You don’t hired to use a dove pan at a Barmitzvah, you’re walking a long and mysterious road. You see things that others can’t see. You do things that others can’t do.

It also has built into it the notion of suspension of disbelief. Darwin Ortiz talked about how magic never really incorporates the willing suspension of disbelief, and while I can see his point, in that magic needs to really engender almost near-belief in order to be powerful, but going down that road can still be an acknowledgement that deception is in play — it’s just that the deception is sublime. Here, though, the Charlatan wants to maintain the illusion of being the real deal, and frankly, that’s a lot easier when you’ve got people who already believe in the phenomena that you’re demonstrating. This is one reason why Charlatans tend to be successful when sticking around the psychic territory, since modern culture (things like the X-files, Astrology, etc.) has been pretty good at fostering the notion that this is a plausible area of the supernatural.

Of course, that means you’ve got to be careful. If you’re going down this path, it means that you don’t want to be compared to other magicians, so you’ve got to pay attention to what they do and say. Tropes and terms invoked by them are not only to be avoided, they need to be scorned. Obviously, if you’re claiming psychic powers you wouldn’t want to do something like the Chicago Opener, which is a fairly blatant magic trick, but if you’ve got an experiment that you’re doing and some magician sees you do it and then incorporates it into their act, and it becomes popular and even perhaps ubiquitous in a way that the Chicago Opener currently is, then now you’ve got problems. Magicians are known for their tricks, and even when a good trick is done, people believe there’s a method for it. If you’re a Charlatan, there is no method — or rather, you are the method. Having your stuff duplicated by a magician — or worse, a skeptic-magician who’s targetting and exposing charlatans — means you’re compromised. Richard Osterlind echoes Corinda’s point about the acceptable nature of card tricks in a mentalism act, but to think of mentalism as one all-encompassing body is an oversimplification. If I were trying to be a Uri Gellar-type, I wouldn’t touch cards unless I could test-conditions the bastard into the ground. To do otherwise, to let even the faintest whiff of trickery into the exquisite aroma of your act is tantamount to performance suicide.

Obviously, this is incredibly hazardous territory. When you look at any self-respecting person and assert something to their face that they know is impossible, it’s doubly duplicitous, because not only is your claim insulting to their intelligence, but your ballsy continued insistence upon it is equally insulting as well, and can arouse a backlash that most magicians will never have to deal with it. Of course, the great thing about that is that anybody sympathetic to your cause will see these attacks and can either offer sympathy, or even come to your defence. After all, their belief in you has given them pleasure, and now some know-it-all wants to take that meaningful experience and say it’s all false?

And that goodwill can go a long way. If people are already suspending disbelief that can open up some methodologies that might not be available if they’re judging your every move with intense scrutiny. Derren Brown seeks in his shows strategies that don’t involve open compromises, and that makes sense for him, because he’s got a broad audience that includes all levels of schemata (believers, skeptics, people who are there for a good time, etc.). However, if they’re already halfway to believing your powers, they’ll accept the odd compromise. Tyler Erickson even thinks that a Charlatan might get away with flashing a technique or hidden item and get away with it, so long as he’s got one seemingly legitimate bit in there, and that bit captures their imagination enough. If you’re a magician, it’s tough making an excuse for not being able to do something under certain conditions (eg: “What card am I thinking of, smart guy?”). If you’re an effective Charlatan, you won’t have to make any excuses — your audience will be more than happy enough to do it for you.

Hopefully it’s more clear now why I’ve included this as a legitimate archetype for performers to consider. If we can set aside ethical considerations, or even let them be rendered moot by virtue of the fact that you don’t actually hurt somebody aversely through your performances, there’s some fascinating stuff here.

As explained yesterday, the set of Archetypes I’m offering makes a distinction between Bizarrism and story-telling magic, if only because one usually involves a series of motifs or themes, whereas the other involves a format of presentation. For various reasons these two tend to go together quite well — story-telling, as Darwin Ortiz rightly pointed out in Strong Magic, has a capacity to create a very strong atmosphere and invoke a variety of emotions, and these are the sorts of things that Bizarrists are usually very happy to take advantage of.

That said, they can be seen as separate entities as well. Triumph, various Magician-vs-Gambler tricks, “3 Card Monkey Business”/”Colour Monte”, Hamman’s “Two Twins”, “Sam the Bellhop” etc. can all involve story-telling in its most innocent form, the relating of a past experience. In fact, there are a lot of advantages that can be drawn from story-telling by all kinds of magicians aside from Bizarrists, as well as some potential drawbacks.

First, though, the advantages…

* People like well-told stories. This is not just an accepted art form, it’s an accepted High Art form, up there with painting and sculpture. It offers by its nature the potential to increase the audience’s estimation of the routine, from a trifle to something really substantive.

* A story can be a great shift of tone in a magic set. Most tricks force the audience to experience interaction-driven events. Every now and then, though, switching up the tone can add texture to the set, giving people are more complete and well-rounded experience. Stories are a great way to do that.

* Stories can serve as an audience management tool. A well-told story can make your audience passive and attentive to what will happen next… and if by some chance somebody else doesn’t care for it, they’ll still be under social pressure to see how the story plays out.

* Stories can invoke other artistic features. Drama, tension, humour, atmosphere, surprise, excitement, suspense, tragedy, nostalgia, poignancy, etc. are all things that can be created simply through the competent retelling of a good story. Magic frequently suffers the problem of hitting the same note once too often, and the potential to switch things up and add texture to a set is vast if the appropriate story trick is brought into play.

* Stories can diffuse challenge. This is a big one for those who want to use tricks such as 3 Card Monte, or any number of “Guess what the real state of affairs is” type of tricks (eg: 2-in-the-hand/1-in-the-pocket) but don’t want to have to incorporate the challenge effect aspect of it. I’ve done this, it works, and depending upon venue and expectations this is a good way to ensure that theatricality doesn’t suffer via audience-driven disruptions.

* Stories can offer justification for difficult-to-motivate tricks. Part of what makes fiction work is the idea of suspension of disbelief, and this is a feature that can brought into a magic trick where things might otherwise be considered difficult to motivate. Consider Triumph. Who on earth would shuffle face-up into face-down? Even if this is a stretch of the imagination, people will play along so long as there’s a promise that the pay-off will be worth it. (How you get them to accept that promise, of course, is another story…)

* Stories can add meaning to an effect. There are some that argue that magic is inherently meaningful. I’m willing to buy into that to a certain extent, in a “the medium is the message” kind of way. However, sometimes people get dulled to the novelty of surprises and real-time mysteries, and are receptive to (if not in active search of) something a bit more. Plus, let’s face it, as society advances, a lot of what we do risks becoming trivialized simply by virtue of our imagination getting surpassed by what science and technology are capable of. A little meaning in that context doesn’t hurt too much. Additionally, the promise of meaning can be used to heighten interest in something that might otherwise be considered a minor feat — eg: the Hindu Thread Mystery.

* Conflict is a fantastic theatrical tool. Pit two people against each other on understood terms, throw a little contrast between the two, add some jeopardy, and you’ve got the building blocks for narrative art. It’s worth mentioning that Whit Haydn considers that these same dynamics are what make any pick-a-card trick capable of being elevated to art, simply because you’ve got a protagonist, an antagonist, and a conflict. How the magician goes about resolving that conflict is where the art kicks in. The very power of this simple principle is probably what’s lead to the magician-in-trouble plot being so pervasive. I could talk at length about this here, but really, get thee to Tommy Wonder. I’d actually recommend studying his ideas (and the routines that use those ideas) since they can be useful to anybody, Allegorist or no.

Drawbacks?

* People hate poorly-told stories (or poetry, or fables, or…). People don’t like their time wasted, and a poorly-told story wastes people’s time in a particularly insufferable way. And, truth be told, most magicians have a hard enough time pulling off a good trick that trying to indulge in story-telling is a bad idea, and even further, so many people (let alone magicians) don’t really understand how to put a good story together. It’s not enough to use flowery language or have an eloquent style, and magicians frequently add the tone of gravitas to a passage that only exacerbates things and would get them laughed out of a first year Creative Writing course. Just as Aesthetes benefit from understanding the visual and dynamic arts and setting aside magic to study the masters of those disciplines, and just as Clowns benefit from aspiring beyond what’s considered “comedy magic” to look at what makes for good comedy in any venue, Allegorists need to broaden their exposure to good story-telling beyond what’s commonly done by other magicians. If you’re going to take proper advantage of incorporating the features of an art form, you’d best be conversant in what makes the art form work. And here’s a clue — when I’m saying an “art form”, I’m not necessarily saying that you’ve got to aim for Faulkner or Hemingway. On the contrary, it’s that attempt to aim for “high art” that makes the exercise laughable. Find somebody you like and also happens to be good at their craft, study them to see what they do, and incorporate that.

* People want to interact. Magic offers something that most other artforms, including live performance art forms, do not, and that’s the element of interaction. Throw too much story at people and you’ll risk alienating them or turning them off outright, because you’re denying them something that’s usually expected in magic, particularly close-up magic, and that’s the opportunity to be a part of the experience, and even share in the shaping of it.

* Stories require certain venues. Noise, language barriers, levels of drunkenness, etc. can drastically impact your ability to engage people with a story. Assuming you want to be a working magician incorporating aspects of the Allegorist, understand that at times it won’t be feasible. Stay flexible.

* Metaphors are hard to do well. By definition, a metaphor is something that represents something else — a doll might represent a child’s innocence, a wand might represent something else that’s both elongated and gets regularly manipulated by the magician, etc. The problem is that in order to do a metaphor well, you’ve got to take the chance that the audience can make the connection that you’re hoping for. If you find yourself literally saying “This card represents the depths of your soul” then you’re incorporating metaphors poorly. A huge part of the power of a metaphor is the spectator’s ability to draw the connection themselves, and making the connection for them risks both diluting the power of the interpretation in their own mind, as well as insulting their intelligence by indirectly conveying that you don’t think they’re smart enough to interpret the metaphor correctly.

Additionally, though, poor artists, in an attempt to invoke symbols and metaphors and presumably announce to the world that what they’re doing is profound, not only execute metaphors poorly, they choose them poorly as well — meaning, they have the lofty abstraction in mind that they want to talk about, and then force it onto a prop that doesn’t mesh well with it. Never mind oil and water, I’ve seen tricks where people try to use playing cards to represent hopes and dreams, and they’re usually painful because they’re trying to force meaning upon an item (or proceedings that are done with that item) that’s artistically inappropriate.

As an example, take the Torn and Restored plot. This is not an uncommon device in narrative-driven tricks, for good reason — you’ve got something, something bad happens to it, but then it’s restored. There’s a pleasing symmetry and circularity to it. We’re not talking High Literature, of course, but it’s an acceptable way of having events unfold. That said, when Eugene Burger chooses thread as his object to tear and restore, and he’s having that thread represent the universe, that’s an excellent choice not just because it’s a phsyical item that’s getting torn and restored, it’s also an item defined by the quality of length, which can mimic the linear way many humans perceive existence (a start point, an end point, a path, etc.). Going with a playing card or a newspaper in this instance would be a bad idea, if only because of the additional traits that those items bring to the equation.

* Sometimes a good story is a distraction. A good story transports people into imagination, which is a good thing. A good magic trick forces people to question the literal truth in front of their eyes, which is also a good thing. Unfortunately, most people don’t really want to be troubled with these two warring mental processes competing for their attention. It’s already difficult enough making sure the metaphors work, the props fit, the pacing is good, the scheduling of events works, and you’re not umming and ahing. Forcing people to choose between enjoying a great story and trying to appreciate the physical mystery can be a very difficult balance. Another potential problem related to this is that you usually don’t want the story ending and the trick’s climax to be at staggered moments, since that sometimes only serves the highlight the lack of organic relationship between the two, which suggests one is subservient to the other, which means that either the story or the trick was optional add-on content, which can water down the impression of the trick as a whole.

* Sometimes the trick can’t make good on what makes stories so compelling. In order for stories to work, time and care and attention needs to be taken in setting up characters and agents and conflicts and whatnot, just to get the story moving properly. Where things get troublesome is that most tricks are around three or four minutes in length maximum. That’s not really enough time to get a great narrative going. This means that simplifications and one-dimensional and/or stereotypical characters are needed, just so that the trick doesn’t get bogged down with too much, but that means you’re risking telling a bad story, which suggests that skipping the story might be the smartest thing, assuming you can’t handle delivery of those elements in a satisfying way. Plus, there’s the element of conflict resolution. Most satisfying stories involve the character resolving the conflict according to their own means, but most magic tricks involve the magician snapping his fingers to make something miraculous happen, a la Deus Ex Machina. Deus Ex Machina is usually a hallmark of bad storytelling.

This is one reason why narrative forms other than full-blown stories ought to be considered, such as anecdotes, parables or even jokes, since it doesn’t put too much weight on the narrative to carry the entire proceedings. Even poetry might be a better written form to study than narrative, since poetry has no requirement to involve characters or an acceptable plot.

* Sometimes stories are forgotten anyway. Whit Haydn made the point that the key story in any trick isn’t the one the magician might be telling, but rather the spectator’s own story that he’ll tell afterwards about having witnessed the trick. These things don’t really have to be mutually exclusive, though, and that alone might not be reason enough to drop a story, as that might be the best way for the trick to unfold — something like Sam The Bellhop, for instance, might cause them to remember the recount the experience something like this: “It was amazing, he told this entire story with the whole deck of cards! He kept shuffling them and cutting them and it didn’t matter, he had every card he needed when he needed it, and he used every last one.” Would they remember the specific aspects of the poker hands at the end? Unlikely. Also, irrelevant.

However, where things get problematic is if the story imposes itself as an interference in that Ghost Story aspect. If that happens, you’ve got a problem. Even though I’m constantly making mention of the need to really dive into any art form you’re hoping to incorporate into your routine, in the end you’re a magician, and they’re there to see magic. You want to have a good understanding of literature or humour or aesthetics because your audience is probably filled with people who’ve read a ton of books or watched a lot of comedies or seen dancing before. But when they come to you, they’re looking for magic, so don’t overindulge on these other elements to the point that you lose balance.

Similar to the problem with the Bizarrist Archetype is that we don’t really have enough models of truly remarkable performers who follow this approach. Eugene Burger is a great one, of course, and the fact that he’s been so good in both story-telling and Bizarrism is (I suspect) a huge part of why so many people think the two are synonymous with each other. That’s too bad, though, because it limits a potentially rich subgenre of magic in Bizarrism by forcing it into a specific presentational framework, as well as ruining what ought to be a great format in storytelling by forcing a certain set of motifs into it.

However, even if we lack performers we can point to as models, we do have many instances of great tricks that involve story-telling. Sam the Bellhop is instructive because narratively, it’s rather weak, but the trick is fantastic. Colour Monte is another one, and R. Paul Wilson’s Gypsy Monte approach is quite nice. Tommy Wonder’s Ring, Wallet and Watch is a great example of how a simple story with a readily-understandable conflict is all that’s necessary to get into the trick. Ricky Jay’s History Lesson involves a lot of anecdotes that are presented mostly as humour, and that’s another option. Hamman’s Two Twins is a good example of a trick where the story and trick mesh together well and appropriately, and even if the miracle is minor and the story won’t remind anybody of Moby Dick, it’s a good example of light entertainment that fits the archetype.

I’ve got a background in writing, so I’m probably going to revisit this one way later, but for now, 2500 words (and 15 revisions) ought to be enough.

If there is a black sheep in the family when it comes to magic, the Bizarrist would probably be it, and I’m not just talking about attire. This archetype seeks to reconcile the traditional performance of magic with the way that “magic” actually exists as a cultural force. Things like Voodoo, Shamanism, Wicca, and even traditional religious tropes all point towards the possibility of doing supernatural feats (of one form or another), either through innate power or via the use of spells and incantations.

Most magicians shy away from this territory, but the Bizarrist dives right into it. If we see God as a metaphor for the source of things we do not understand, then surely magic can be seen similarly, perhaps as an agent of mystery or some such.

Very quickly, I want to address one commonly-accepted aspect of Bizarrism that won’t be making it into this archetype definition, which the idea that Bizarrism is synonymous with story-telling magic. It’s understandable how this might come about, for several reasons. First, real-life magick often involves strange items and rituals, and it only makes sense that a narrative would serve to help introduce these things, if only to justify them. Second, real-life wizards were often seen as purveyors of knowledge — this was their social function — and it makes sense that a wizard would indulge in tales, stories and parables to pass on his wisdom. Plus, there’s a practical aspect to this as well, which is that if enough people say Bizarrism is about story-telling, then you pretty much believe that you can do Bizarrism without it.

However, while the system of archetypes does allow for a feasible hybrid between the Bizarrist and the Allegorist (the fancy name for the story-teller magician), the two of these will be kept separate, for the simple reason that it’s possible to invoke Bizarrist tropes without telling a story, and conversely, it’s possible to tell a story without invoking Bizarrist tropes. Hopefully, this should be clear when we get to the Allegorist later on in this series.

If we focus in on Bizarrism as being about concepts of real-life magick, though, then its appeal should be obvious. Who hasn’t wanted to master things beyond their understanding, and been seduced by the idea that certain words said a certain way with certain actions would lead to that? What culture hasn’t had icons, either real or fictional, that had these powers somehow? If you think about it, this view of the magician is the basis behind what we see in The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Happy Potter or any number of fantasy films. Yoda, Gandalf and Dumbledore aren’t extensions of the trickster or sleight-of-hand artist. The very contrast between this standard fictional depiction of magicians and the real-life magician performance-artist is made readily apparent in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail, where the wizard shoots fireballs, and the knights politely clap.

So… how does one perform Bizarrism well?

This is problematic. Keep in mind that if people are really willing to explore that side of magic, they can do this without going to a magic show. There are Wiccan covens that can be joined, and movies involving supernatural magic that can be appreciated. The very merging of this dramatically potent portrayal of magic with the idea of magic as trickery is perilous, as it either risks trivializing the concept of magic or even patronizing the audience through its overly-sincere tone. One obvious solution to this, then, is to involve aspects of irony or camp, so that people understand that there may be more than one way to evaluate what it is that they’re looking at. I feel that this is a huge part of Eugene Burger’s success, because he’s able to gradually bring people in, and if they’re not willing to follow him that far, he can always just stick with straight magic that’s guaranteed to work and play well (spongeballs, card-through-tablecloth, etc.). Alternately, he can do harmless-seeming magic tricks that seem to point towards other, deeper powers (spirit messages, the haunted pack, etc.). It’s also worth noting that his magic doesn’t have to stop at the mere establishing of spirits or ghosts, but rather can go beyond to the deeply metaphorical or else comment on the nature of the human mortal experience (the Inquisition) or our attempts to understand the universe (the Hindu thread mystery). I’d argue that this ability to be flexible in approach is one that had best be learned by the prospective Bizarrist, lest they end up confining themselves to limited venues.

But assuming that you’ve found yourself a willing audience, how do you perform Bizarrism well? One big pitfall to avoid is the invocation of common magician-as-trickster tropes. Doing something like Spongeballs or the Ambitious Card or the Cups and Balls is going to lead to them looking at you as a traditional magician — not necessarily a bad thing, but now you’re no longer tapping into the potential of this archetype. Better than this is to ensure that you’re doing strong effects that invoke Bizarrist tropes, but making these presentations credible is going to be really difficult. Something like a well-done Haunted Pack can work because it points towards an invisible force, and ghosts are invisible, so there’s a chance to make a strong case that a ghost moved the cards.

Unfortunately, there’s a trend in Bizarrism that’s embracing this idea of taking a packet trick and tacking a ghost story onto it. Doing something half-assed like a Flushtration count to show that their selected photo is the one that was touched by a ghost on the back, doesn’t really cut it because the props are being openly manipulated and displayed by somebody who’s not a ghost. Higher proof, and fewer moves or other opportunities for overt deception, are required to make that effect more credible, and even then there’s a glass ceiling, because there’s too much of a gap between what the effect does and what it’s meant to signify.

Several of the Archetypes in the set point towards the proof of something. Take the Reader, who wants to show he can really pluck thoughts from the spectator’s mind. The degree of the Reader’s success is directly related to how direct they can be in coming through on the effect. That means few open compromises. The Reader fulfills the promise of the being a Reader by having an effect where you think of anything you want (a word, a picture, a memory) and him divining it directly. Introducing books, decks of cards, pieces of paper, etc. has the effect of diluting it.

This idea of removing compromises applies to the Bizarrist as well. “You picked the right card, therefore there are ghosts.” is a weak argument to make, and it only gets marginally better by using Tarot Cards or Photos from the 19th Century or whatever. You want to show ghosts? Make things move. Have a chill go through the spectator’s body. Have somebody tap on their shoulder when nobody is behind them. Have strange noises come from within a totally-examinable box.

Want to really show hurting and healing powers? Don’t have a card selected with a human figure on it, and then show it changed so that it’s bleeding. Instead, pull out a voodoo doll, let them choose where on the voodoo doll to touch, stick it with a needle, and have somebody else feel a twinge at that point. That’s not only making good on the effect, it invokes the concept of Voodoo in a quasi-realistic manner.

That last example would be a great trick, if there was a reliable method for it, or if a presentation could be crafted so that this is the exact memory that even a skeptical person could leave with. The problem is that too many Bizarrists substitute that trick, which has a chance of being credible, with something involving cards or props and which only alludes to Voodoo themes on an abstract level. Here, rather than having the compromise be methodological, it’s presentational. We’re back to the whole artistically bankrupt notion of “You picked a certain card, therefore Voodoo exists.”

One thing that many Bizarrists have tried to leverage is the concept of ritual being superimposed on a self-working card trick. This has been done with varying degrees of success. Usually self-working effects involve a degree of procedure, and all these steps do point towards the potential to mesh well with a ritual. Rituals or ritualistic spell-casting in fantasy or horror stories often involve seemingly arbitrary steps, and many self-working card tricks definitely have a lot of arbitrary steps in them… but that’s not enough. The stories talk about things like saying certain words over and over again, mixing reagents in potions, adding things like a bat’s wings or a mouse’s tail into a cauldron. They don’t involve dealing three rows of seven. Even if the Bizarrist is attempting to replicate the feat of a psychic or an ancient gypsy working with Tarot cards, the aim should be verisimilitude. Richard Osterlind talked about the importance of using ESP Zener cards in a demonstration that actually mimicked the real-life experiments that researchers used to test ESP, and that’s a wholly underappreciated point in the Mentalist community, which is happy to take those cards and have people deal them off or put them in envelopes or do predictions or incorporate additional apparatus or whatnot. Granted, the entertainment value needs to be there, but the real potential of things like mentalism or bizarrism is through credible demonstrations of the related phenomena. Otherwise, you’re not fulfilling your Archetype so much as you’re demonstrating a watered-down version of it (at best) or a parody of it (at worst).

That last one is where so many Bizarrists go wrong, unfortunately, and it’s with no small amount of annoyance that I’m trying to establish this specific archetype as legitimate while having so few proper examples to draw on. Aside from Eugene Burger’s performances and Robert Neale’s writings, what have we got? Derren Brown does a fantastic spirit cabinet, a better demonstration of freaky supernatural agents than most you’ll see, and he’s not even a damned Bizarrist.

Sorry to end on a downer…