P 59 • "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)