This page contains a list of magic tricks. In magic literature, tricks are often called effects. Based strictly upon published literature and marketed effects, there are hundreds of millions of effects; a short performance routine by a single magician may contain dozens of effects.
Some serious students of magic strive to refer to effects by a proper name, and are also concerned with the proper attribution of the effect's creator. For example, consider an effect where the magician shows four aces, and then they turn face up one at a time in a mysterious fashion. This effect might be recognized as Twisting the Aces, which is attributed to Dai Vernon, based on a false count invented by Alex Elmsley. Some tricks are listed merely with their marketed name (particularly those that are sold as stand-alone tricks by retail dealers), whereas others are listed by the name given within magic publications.
Read more about Magic Tricks: Stage Illusions, Close-up Effects, Mentalism, Levitations, Utilities/Accessories
Famous quotes containing the words magic and/or tricks:
“We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitions. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.”
—Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945)
“Which I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar:
Which the same I would rise to explain.”
—Bret Harte (1836–1902)