M is for Magic
M is for Magic
(From the A-Z of Secrecy and Ignorance Series)
Professor Brian Rappert, University of Exeter
Entertainment magic is constituted by acts of revelation and concealment. Regarding revelations: ‘Ta-da’ effects, such as the production of a fluffy white rabbit from a seemingly empty top hat, infuse public imaginations of this art.[1] Where there was (shown to be) nothing, there appears something. Regarding concealment, audiences typically recognise performances involve methods of subterfuge that misdirect audiences’ attention. Relatedly, part of the common folklore of magic is that its practitioners need to adhere to the ‘Magician’s Code’; the proscription that ‘A magician never reveals their secrets’.[2] The appreciated roles of intentional concealment in magic function to set magicians apart from their audiences while also enticing audiences to uncover the hidden methods at work.
With these points it might be taken that revelation and concealment simply pertain to different aspects of magic. Revelation features in the ‘presented story’ of what apparently goes on and concealment in the ‘hidden story’ of how it was done.
As fitting for this art, not everything is as it seems. In most forms of magic today, it is not simply that the methods are hidden. Rather, there is a concealment of concealment.[3] Compared to the elaborate stage shows of the 19th century that gave ample scope for audiences to imagine all sorts of hidden apparatus were in play, today the most prevalent styles of magic are minimalistic and naturalistic in appearance. Magicians employ simple props (such as coins, playing cards and so on) to create the impression that not only is no skullduggery in play, but that there is nowhere for any skullduggery to take place. Nothing up my sleeve, nothing in my hand.
And yet, in recent years, this attention to layered concealment has been complemented by the increasing accessibility of ‘how to’ methods on social media platforms such as YouTube. A sort of magical transparency. The latter means that non-practitioners have ready access to once arcane methods in general and dissections of specific performances because of the concerted labours of some of those skilled in the art. Thus, in-line with Vermeir’s analysis of the openness and secrecy binary,[4] in magic openness and secrecy do not exist as mutually exclusive possibilities, but often (more or less happily) coexist.
The relation between the movement to reveal and the movement to conceal become ever more entangled when we note how gestures of exposure routinely figure within performances.[5] The minimalistic and naturalistic styles of magic so prevalent today often are supplemented through verbal patter whereby magicians make reference to how tricks rely on hidden methods.[6] Magicians routinely, for instance, make explicit reference to sleight of hand techniques such as the ‘palming’ of objects.[7] Such in-performance references are termed ‘reveals’ by practitioners. In the manner that magicians secrete secrets, this art practices what Taussig referred to as the ‘skilled revelation of skilled concealment’.[8] Such practices can be highly complex and iteratively meaningful. Magicians can use gestures and words to indicate a trick is done by a certain method only to perform it again in such a manner that it becomes evident that it need not be done through that method at all (even if it actually was). Through such self-reflexive patter, magicians cultivate beliefs about magic even while they disprove them.
And yet, to formulate what is at stake in this manner makes presumptions that some might well question. Magicians dispute what ought to count as the actual secrets of their trade too specifically the importance of ‘how to’ methods. Perhaps the most prominent example of this took place in 1936 when the first President of the Magic Circle, David Devant, published methods for some of his tricks in the popular Windsor Magazine.[9] One of the (ultimately unpersuasive) justifications Devant gave the Magic Circle for this public exposure was that the real secrets of magic lie in the artistry of performance, not the ‘how to’ methods of codified instructions. In a similar vein, magician and historian Jim Steinmeyer’s well-known phrase, ‘Magicians guard an empty safe’,[10] speaks to the belief of some that ‘there are few secrets that [magicians] possess that are beyond the capacity of a high school science class, little technology more complex than a rubber band, a square of mirrored glass, or a length of thread. When an audience learns how it’s done, they quickly dismiss that art: “Is that all it is?”.[11] For Steinmeyer, it is not the props, hidden apparatuses or even the sleight of hand techniques that make magic a skillful art, but the creativity of its practitioners in creating experiences of the impossible. As such, talk of ‘how to’ methods is beside the point; we might even refer to such talk as a form of misdirection.
How then might magic inform Secrecy Studies? What this art offers is not simply a demonstration of how secrecy can promote experiences of wonder, but how wonder can produce a fascination with secrecy. It also reminds us of the complex interplay of revelation and concealment and of the ‘layers’[12] of secrecy that are often at work.
Further Readings
Rappert, Brian (2022) Performing Deception: Learning, Skill and the Art of Conjuring Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Available at: https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0295.pdf
Jones, Graham M (2018) Magic’s Reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Luhrmann, T. M. (1989) ‘The Magic of Secrecy’, Ethos, 17:2, pp.131-165. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/i201427
Mangan, Michael (2007) Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring. Bristol: Intellect.
[1] Interestingly, while the trick of pulling a rabbit out of a hat has become iconic, very few magicians in the past or today have ever performed it.
[2] https://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-tricks/articles/magic-tricks-revealed/?srsltid=AfmBOopTenfd2CGeTquD1Ddx7pkn9-sOPNrYJolrBeZ4LyfHUO4ZVkv8
[3] Smith, Wally (2015) ‘Technologies of stage magic’ Social Studies of Science June 45: 319 – 343.
[4] Vermeir, K. (2012) ‘Openness versus secrecy? Historical and historiographical remarks’ British Journal for the History of Science 45(2): 165–188. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087412000064.
[5] Rappert, Brian and Gustav Kuhn (2024) ‘Toward a theory of exposure’ Journal of Performance Magic 7(1): https://www.journalofperformancemagic.org.uk/article/id/1512/
[6] Rappert, Brian (2022) Performing Deception: Learning, Skill and the Art of Conjuring Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Available at: https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0295.pdf
[7] Smith, Wally (2021) ‘Deceptive strategies in the miniature illusions of close-up magic’ in Illusion in Cultural Practice, ed, K. Rein London: Routledge: 123 – 138.
[8] Taussig, M. (2003) ‘Viscerality, faith, and skepticism: Another theory of magic’ In Magic and modernity: Interfaces of revelation and concealment eds, Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels Stanford: Stanford University Press: 272 – 306.
[9] Dawes, Edwin A. (2007) ‘Rule 13’ Cabinet 26 at https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/26/dawes.php.
[10] Steinmeyer, Jim. (2003) Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned How to Disappear. New York: Carroll and Graf: 17.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Van Veeren, Elspeth (2019) ‘Secrecy’s subjects: Special operators in the US shadow war,’ European Journal of International Security 4.3: 386-414