Here is an example from a post from long ago:
There is an implicit pact between the magician and the audience.
I should now like to discuss this pact and use the bond between performer and audience as the premise of something else I will reveal at the end. Shall we continue??
An audience attending a magic act is in attendance for two main reasons.
1.Entertainment
2.The desire to match wits with a puzzle and its solution and the determined effort to be amazed when this fails.
Yes, the magician knows full well he is in a battle. The audience will scrutinize his movements for the "secret" so that they can feel superior and hold him in disdain. Yet, above all else, the audience does not really wish to discover the secret. No, they will experience a far more intense emotion if they can be fooled, amazed and made to believe the miraculous.
Isn't that interesting? A battle in which only one side really wishes to "win"?
But, let's move on, shall we?
The truth about magic is that a magician jealously guards his secrets for a different reason than you might at first imagine. The magician doesn't safeguard the secret of the illusion because the secret is a large one. No. But, it is rather because it is so small and mundane. Yes!
Nothing is so disappointing and deflating as knowing how little there is to the "miraculous" in a trick!!
Why is this true?
Well, my friends, I'll tell you. Read on.....
I call it the prospect of TOTAL OVERWHELM! We invest ourselves emotionally in being carried away. We fear it and we crave it simultaneously. Why? We want there to be MAGIC! Why? Because the burden of our own life lies in our overwhelming responsibility to make our own way without help. It is tiring. It is exhausing. It is depressing. How much better if we could simply let go and find ourselves in a magic place where a force overwhelmingly powerful has pulled the rug of expectation out from under us and we have "fallen" into a state of ecstacy!
Such is the bargain between the Magician and yourself.
Read on......
The tools of magic are basic and spare, yet; the magnificence of the power they wield are profound.
Did you know there are only 6 magic tricks in all the world? Yes, only six.
All illusion, prestidigitation, legerdemain and sleight-of-hand combined merely juggle these six elements.
Briefly, they are:
1.Disappearance
2.Production (something out of nothing)
3. Transformation (one thing becomes another thing.)
4. Motive Power (objects with the ability to move on their own.)
5. Natural Law Violation (levitation, going through a wall, etc.)
6.Transposition (two objects change places)
Yes, all magic combines one or many of these six elements. Beyond that there is only the performance.
The magician is really what makes the magic appear to be genuine.
Did you read that with the proper importance? Or, did you pass over it lightly?
The MAGICIAN is what really makes the magic APPEAR to be GENUINE.
It is a skilled performance, a practised performance and an effortless spontaneity which brings magic alive.
The Magician tells you something and sets up your expectation, then; astonishes you at your point of greatest anticipation. You are fooled. Why?
Remember the pact? You wish to be fooled. You desire to be defeated. You co-operate while appearing not to. Why? Because of the tickle of original feeling that flushes emotional transcendance when you are FOOLED.
Your brain REWARDS you when your expectations are defeated by something unexpected! Why?
The human brain squirts an intoxicating substance any time you LEARN something. This is evolution at its best and worst. Most of the time a learning experience will make you more fit to survive. That's a good thing, by the way! Yet, when you are simply fooled you are rewarded too. Did you know that? Why? Because you are confronted with the opposite of what you expected and you survived the experience. This is reason enough to be REWARDED by the squirt of heroin that pleases your brain so much! Being fooled is considered a LEARNING process that is PRO survival.
Is it?
In the wild it is. Being fooled by a camouflaged predator can make you dead or half-eaten. But, detecting the camouflage and seeing how you were fooled (if you survive) is a learning experience that is worth being rewarded for. Now do you understand?
There is a downside. Of course, you knew that was coming.
Playing video games can become addictive because you are rewarded with a squirt each time you "survive" the proxy situation onscreen. Watching movies is pleasurable because you can vicariously survive all sorts of adventures in the comfort of your seat while munching popcorn.
What about magic?
Each time you are amazed, fooled, exhilarated and excited by the UNEXPLAINABLE---you are rewaded by a thrilling brain-buzz which becomes an end in itself.
That's why you might love horror movies, lotsa porno, working crossword puzzles and figuring out how a magician does his tricks.
But, hold on! Is that all I was getting at? Is that all I wanted to tell you? Is that my "reveal" at the end? Did I merely want to explain why you like to be fooled or tricked or puzzled?
No. Read on.
Remember I told you the real magic was the PERFORMANCE skill of the Magician? It is. But, the pact makes that skill work; the pact between you as the audience and the close attention you pay to the words and movements of the magician onstage.
This is the same setup which also occurs between the BELIEVER and the RELIGIOUS MYSTIC.
The BELIEVER starts out skeptical just as the person who sits watching the magician perform "knows" it is all a trick and not a true demonstration of the miraculous. Yet, the desire to be fooled is implicit in the attention given and the dedication to following the words and movments which follow.
A Magician uses misdirection. He tells you where to look and where not to look. It is the art of misdirection combined with the concealment of the important element or fact that sets you up to be fooled.
You use your intelligence to predict what is real and how things work. You base your sense of the real and objective world on your everyday experience. You have a built in sensibility of how things will go. Causes lead to effects and your life steps gingerly in accordance. The smarter you are the better you are able to overcome obstacles by predicting problem areas and devising a way around them without self-harm.
However! The magician relies on defying the natural by an arsenal of contrivances, gimmicks and false fronts which appear natural and ordinary. Yet, they conceal their 6 elements because of two things.
1.The audience wants to be fooled while fighting it by trying to use everyday logic to discover the trick.
2.The trick is designed to take advantage of the expectations and thwart them by built-in defeats through misdirection.
A magic illusion is a lie, you see. It is artful and designed to work through the hidden mechanism you are not accustomed to in your daily encounter with everyday objects. A coin is just a coin. Right? Wrong, in a magic act the coin is not just a coin; it is a specially made coin with a device built in.
A card is just a playing card, right? Wrong. It is part of a special deck with hidden aspects the magician can use to achieve his aims.
In other words, your everyday intelligence is NOT AWARE of the phoney and seemingly mundane appearance which hides the concealed mechanism of a trick. You do not have the BASIC vocabulary of the 6 elements to inform your observations.
Once you know these 6 elements and how they are used almost every trick you see will easily be deducible and solvable instantly. Magic becomes commonplace at that point. Why? Because it is so mundane. It is ordinary. It all comes down to the skill of the performance.
The Bible is a combination of those same 6 elements and Religion is a magic trick. Various skilled magicians through the centuries have used those 6 elements to fool the audience of seemingly skeptical believers by taking advantage of hidden properties which defy expectation.
At the earliest stages of human history priests, shaman and magi (from which we get the word "magic") were skilled performers. They gained special status from their level of mastery in duping and thrilling the human mind with its pact of desiring the Transcendent Experience.
All throughout mankind's journey through time these magicians were variously called Prophets, Miracle Workers and Demi-gods. Yet, they used the selfsame 6 elements with skill to achieve their effects and rely on the pact to work their magic.
The rest of humanity relied on the STORIES told about these exploits for their vicarious thrills. STORIES exaggerated the exploits into momentous achievements at the hands of a superpowerful God instead magic.
Magic was divided into Good and Evil magic. God was behind the Good and Satan was the cause of the Evil.
Every religious sect begins with elements of the six.
Muhammed is said to have been ILLITERATE and yet he produced perfect Arabic verses. The concealment is in the misdirection of the presentation. Was Muhammed in fact illiterate? How would any of us know this for certain? Should we merely accept this premise?
Joseph Smith had plates of gold which he translated using a seer stone. (Yes, a rock with a hole in it!) By sticking the stone in a hat and burying his face in it! He "translated" from behind a curtain, no less! We are told that a great many witnesses actually "saw" these gold plates. Should we accept all this as given? The remaining examples of the original words of Joseph Smith are in awful rural english with grammatical errors and run-on sentences, yet; the modern Book of Mormon scriptures have been...ummm..."adjusted" so that you'd never know that at all!
Moses went up on a mountain and nobody was allowed to come near. He returned with tablets of stone actually written by the finger of God himself! Oh--the tablets were broken, naturally(by Moses) and Moses had to replace them by carving some himself! This isn't suspicious behavior, is it?
Charles Taze Russell was specially chosen by God to be his mouthpiece by allowing Russell to interpret scripture and Pyramid measurements to know in advance when Jesus would return. There are millions of people today who subscribe to the religion Russell started because they believe this! Or, do they? The story has changed many times and the trick goes on.
Remember the pact?
The audience wishes to be fooled.
Their brains are rewarded each time they participate!
That is my reveal! Every element of religious belief is rewarded when you allow yourself to be fooled!
1975 was my last "reward". By overcoming that reveal I and millions of others got the largest reward of a lifetime.
Fool me once; shame on you.
Fool me twice; shame on me.
