“As a magician I promise never to reveal the secret of any illusion to a non-magician, unless that one swears to uphold the Magician’s Oath in turn. I promise never to perform any illusion for any non-magician without first practicing the effect until I can perform it well enough to maintain the illusion of magic.”
If you are truly dedicated to learning and understanding magic, then you should stand proudly and say the Magician’s Oath listed above. By doing so, you establish yourself as a magician along with making the promise to yourself and other magicians that you will uphold your promise and not reveal secrets of the trade purposely of due to your inexperience with a trick.
As much as magic is about amusing your audience and leaving them with a feeling of awe, magic is also about you enjoying what you’re doing. If a trick you’re about to perform has been revealed to your audience, you’ll find that the fun of the situation has all but disappeared. Recognizing the effects that revealing a trick can have on your performance and the performance of others should be enough to dissuade you from doing so. But if it isn’t, keep in mind that many individuals perform magic tricks for a living. Would you pay to see a magician if you knew how all of his tricks were performed?
Magician’s tend to distance themselves from other magician’s who have broken the Magician’s Oath. With fellow magician’s being the best source to learn new tricks and help refine your skills, breaking the oath can be career or hobby suicide. Magician’s who have entered the lime light to reveal secrets have been publicly outed in the past and now find themselves no longer active in the world of magic.
Reading about the Magician’s Oath on a website that provides instruction as to how to perform magic tricks may seem odd, but the truth of it is that we’re upholding the oath in our own part as well. It has always been considered acceptable to provide a means to learn magic to those that have the desire to learn magic. It has become harder and harder to come by a magician who will invest the time to teach someone the trade, for pay or free, so turning to the internet, books, and DVDs has become the only available option for many.
One of the greatest things about magic is that the possibilities are endless. Old tricks can always be changed around so that the revealed secret is no longer relevant and a new trick is born. By learning tricks from MagicTricksAndYou.com, you’ll begin to realize that the skill you gain here will be the building blocks for your future in magic.