I mentioned a few days ago about the idea of a causal premise and I just wanted to drill down and explain what I meant by that for regular readers¹. For the uninitiated all magic tricks have a premise. Well most magic tricks have a premise.
Okay, I’ll go so far as saying good magic tricks ought to have a premise.
I like to load my tricks with perhaps a little more premise than the props themselves can hold, talking about time travel during a cut and restored rope, folding space in higher dimensions during card warp, and international street thieves during a ring on string.
Those premises tend not to get hand waved away however. In my post about dropping a premise midway through I specifically meant causal premises, and that’s what this little post is about.
A causal premise is the idea of a cause behind your magic embedded in the presentation of the trick. One well known example of a causal premise is the notion that signing a card makes it ambitious enough to rise to the top of the deck. However often this premise, embedded in the very title of the Ambitious Card Routine, is demoted from it’s causal nature by the addition of an additional action, such as tapping the deck to make the card rise to the top, calling the card’s name, or some other magical catalyst.
Perhaps a better example is Sam The Bellhop. The premise of Sam The Bellhop is that the cards fall in such an order that they tell a story. That premise isn’t causal however, as the standard routine has nothing to say about how the cards are falling in order to tell a story. The only sensible causal premise I’ve seen for Sam The Bellhop is Bill Malone’s, in which he introduces the story as an improvised narrative based on the outcome of a random sequence of cards. Thish is quite a fun notion as the causal premise (the story is based on the random order of the cards) is directly in conflict with the truth (the cards are in a specific order to match the story), which itself becomes increasingly obvious as the routine continues towards the ending where the last ten cards are two fantastic poker hands. The trick to maintaining this causation is to never ever tell the next part of the story before the card for it is revealed, though the tension can be ratcheted by having the card be literally the next word in the story from the moment it is turned.
Implying causation in magic is usually achieved by accompanying an effect with a particular action, such as a snapping of fingers, tapping with a wand, blowing on a prop, saying a magic word, or the application of woofle dust². This needn’t always be the case however, and one of the magicians I respect above all others³ has spoken⁴ about the deficiencies of will as a magical cause. Similarly if mentalism is more your impossible pastime of choice, the constipated look and finger to the temples of classic mind reading is no loner taken seriously, and has given way to newer ideas of body language reading, micro expressions, neuro-linguistic programming, and subtle subconscious influence. Much of this has been popularised by the television specials of Derren Brown who later had to mention in his interviews and books that he actually used very little NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and that NLP alone can’t be used to achieve the things he does, because a number of fraudulent but expensive NLP courses had sprung up all promising to give attendees the power to fuck with peoples heads in the way Derren does⁵. Maybe his causal premise is maintained too well.
Anyway, just to finish off I wanted to list my favourite causal premises, both ones I use myself and ones that don’t necessarily suit my own style but which I have seen used to great effect.
Wand & Words
This is used by one of my inspirations in magic, Fay Presto. By giving a volunteer a prop to hold and a spell to recite the idea is that they feel they caused the effect to occur.
Physical Ritual
Good for routines with a process to them, such as counting or sorting routines, but also applicable to anything where you can introduce a series of motions as the moment of the magic occurring, such as the Pop Haydn Mongolian Pop Knot.
Misbehaved Props
Difficult to get right but very effective at creating a dramatic conflict of magician vs prop. I achieve this by having my attempts to instigate an effect fail, but effects occur all by themselves on off beats, apparently not expected even by me.
Also works well for levitation and animation effects, giving the prop a mind of its own.
Alchemy
It feels like this has been back in fashion recently, possibly a result of improved flash paper suppliers. Producing or transforming with the application of fire and flames. The best example of this I can give is Kieron Johnson’s ice productions, which literally transmogrify fire into water and ice.
Luck
An alternative for prediction effects, because it’s hard to disprove and helps sell the importance of random selections through a routine. All the rolling of dice, flipping of coins and random pages in phone books makes more sense if you’re relying on favourable applications of chaos theory.
Fake Science
Though technically a wide umbrella⁶, even covering a few of the causes listed above, a faux scientific presentation can not only offer your whole act a genre and character of its own, but also a great excuse to introduce a weird looking prop or an odd bit of procedure.
If you’ve got a favourite causal premise which you think I’d social and unique, feel free to not comment, because I don’t allow comments here. Don’t even tell me in confidence. Don’t tell anyone. Keep it to yourself and work it. Get famous.
¹ Arrogantly assuming I have any
² Oh you better believe we’re gonna drill down into that particular delusion later
³ It was Teller, he’s probably #1 in my top 5
⁴ Yeah, he speaks
⁵ Say what you like about troublewit but no one has ever attempted to sell courses on origami as a way of hypnotising women into bed.
⁶ “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke