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• "Just as no actor would attempt to walk on a stage, instantly begin crying,
and expect to move the audience to tears, no real magician thinks that a
performance consists of flapping and Inverness cape and -- poof! -- causing
a lady to disappear." -- Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians
Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear (2004)
Poop in Your Little Brother's Hair
Facts: This crude magic phrase is used by professional magician Steve
Charney.18
Popcorn
Mystique: Popcorn is transformative, going from small to large and from
hard to soft in an instant, pulling its own rabbit and hat trick by surprising us
with something white and fluffy from out of nowhere. Popcorn's transformation
from kernels of seed symbolizes the magical potential for change when
energy is applied. Since popcorn is the quintessential snack at the movies,
people automatically associate it with entertaining, magical spectacles.
Common Magician's Applications: Restoration. For example: "Say
the magic word, 'popcorn,' and pull the ends of the rope. The knot will pop
off . . . revealing that two ropes have become one."19
Mystique: "[H]issing, popping, clicking, groaning, and other seemingly
inarticulate noises are characteristic forms of magical speech. The German
historian of religion Rudolf Otto called such noises 'original numinous
sounds.' Roman writers called them voces magicae (magical sounds). Neither
human speech nor bestial grunt, the voces magicae provided a way of praying
that could lay claim to the supernatural to a degree that ordinary language
cannot. Making bizarre noises disengages the intellect, eliciting an altered
state of awareness, more potent than, though perhaps not different in kind
from, the hypnotic effect of ordinary chanting or singing. . . . A magical
treatise . . . [entitled] the 'Eighth Book of Moses' [part of the Greek Magical
Papyri] offers a partial interpretation of the hissing and popping noises.
Popping is the sound made by the sacred crocodile when it rises from the
Nile to take a breath; this is how the crocodile (who is a form of the god
18 Hocus Jokus: 50 Funny Magic Tricks Complete with Jokes (200 )
19 Karl Fulves, Self-Working Rope Magic (1990)