Easy Magic with Patricia Patricia is a professional magician known for her easy and astonishing magic tricks that everyone can learn and perform. Her magic tricks are simple yet mind-boggling, making them perfect for beginners and those who want to impress their friends and family. One of Patricia's favorite magic tricks is the disappearing coin trick. All you need for this trick is a regular coin and a bit of sleight of hand. Patricia demonstrates how to hold the coin in her palm and then make it disappear in the blink of an eye. She then reveals the secret behind the trick, showing that the coin was never really gone but cleverly hidden in her other hand.
What Is Magick?
If you ve recently discovered an interest in magick, Wicca, and other emerging metaphysical lifestyles, Magick Made Easy can answer a lot of those nagging questions that come up in the light of a whole new way of thinking. If you absolutely love Fourth of July fireworks and want to write a magic scene involving them, find a story where that scene will fit; don t stick it in the middle of your semi-historical tale about the building of the Pyramids or at the very least, don t call them Fourth of July fireworks, and give me some explanation as to how and when gunpowder got invented early in Egypt and what effect it s had on your less-and-less-historical society.
She then reveals the secret behind the trick, showing that the coin was never really gone but cleverly hidden in her other hand. This trick is a crowd pleaser and can be easily learned with a little practice. Another trick that Patricia recommends is the card prediction trick.
Designing magic, part 1
A couple of years back, I was on a panel about magic systems and how one handles magic in fiction. Near the end of the session, someone asked a question about “magical maturity” stories – the sort where children go through a sort of magical puberty during which they develop greater magical power or control or specific magical gifts. The discussion turned to exactly when such a magical puberty ought to occur: at some arbitrary age, like 16 or eighteen; in conjunction with some outside phenomenon, like whenever the planet of one’s birth returned to a particular part of the sky; etc.
One gentleman opined that any magical maturity ought to occur at the same time as physical puberty, “because it just makes sense, you know?” The discussion began to get heated, and finally I looked at him and said, “You do realize that we are all just making this stuff up, don’t you?”
What this particular person appeared to want was a set of rules that he could apply, in order to determine whether a particular author had or hadn’t “done the magic right” in a particular story. The trouble is, it doesn’t work that way. Mr. X was and is perfectly capable of deciding that he doesn’t like stories that have a magical maturity which occurs at an arbitrary age, and he is certainly within his rights to avoid them and even complain about there being too many of this thing he doesn’t like. But he doesn’t get to impose his views on anyone else, and particularly not on writers.
Because when it comes to writing about magic, the writer is really, really making it up, to a far greater degree than they are with any other aspect of story. Characters, plot, setting, dialog, action, etc. all start with some kind of relationship to real people and the real world. They can be realistic or cartoonish, but they’re all recognizable to some extent, even when they are deliberate caricatures. Magic is far more flexible, because it doesn’t have one obvious real-life analog.
One can, of course, opt for one of the systems of magic that human beings have believed in at one time or another in the past or present. However, magic isn’t like physics or chemistry – there aren’t things that everyone in real life agrees work, or reasons why everyone agrees they work. There are four or five or seven elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water seem to be agreed on by many of the magical systems that go this route, but some substitute Wood or Stone or Metal for one or another, or add them and/or Spirit or Ether or Blood…). There are spirits or demons or elves to bribe or force to perform tasks. There are elaborate ritual systems, some of which require rare ingredients (dragon bones, unicorn horn) or tools and careful drawing of diagrams, others of which require nothing more than extremely specific preparations by the magician himself (e.g., fasting, sex, knowledge of certain languages). There are systems that require animal familiars (cats, ravens) and systems where some, most, or all magic is a specific gift that you are born with (the Sight).
Consequently, there isn’t a right way to portray magic. It isn’t like orbital mechanics, where there are actual calculations involved that have a right answer and a wrong one (and you will get cranky letters from fans if you put the wrong one in your novel). When you are writing a fantasy, you have a plethora of possible sources, many of them mutually incompatible and/or contradictory. There is no “right answer.”
Most of the time, this means the writer comes back to the story. What kind of magic does this particular story need in order to work the way the writer wants it to? If I want to write a story about a thirty-something-year-old-woman coming into her magic for the first time, I’m highly unlikely to look at a magic system in which there’s a magical maturity that’s tied directly to physical puberty. The point of my story wouldn’t be the same if I had to make the main character twelve or fourteen in order to accommodate the “rules” of a magic system that I am making up just as much as I’m making up the rest of the story. Mary Francis Zambino’s A Plague of Sorcerers wouldn’t have been the same without Jermyn’s odd familiar. The Lord of the Rings would be a totally different story if the magic system had been one in which everyone, Hobbit, Human, Elf, Orc, or Dwarf, was born with a specific magical gift or talent.
As always, how different writers work with magic in their fiction varies along a continuum, from the highly intuitive writers to the highly rule-bound ones. The difference from other aspects of writing is, I think, that when you’re writing about magic, even the most intuitive it-just-feels-right writers need a bit of attention to rules, and even the most methodical follow-the-rules writers need a bit of feel for what makes their magic magical. Because the other main way to come up with an interesting and effective magic system is to look outside the story, at the things in the real world that the particular writer finds magical. J.R.R. Tolkien started with languages; C.S. Lewis with “Northernness.” Other writers have based magic on everything from poetry to cooking or gardening – whatever gives them that little thrill down the spine, whether it’s watching the space shuttle launch or standing on the edge of a remote cliff overlooking the ocean.
In any case, one of the most important tools a writer has for getting the readers to believe in the magic in the story (at least while they’re reading it) is consistency. If the writer decides that fire-starting magic only works on Wednesdays, he/she can’t suddenly have the hero using fire-starting magic on Saturday – not without a really good explanation, anyway. It is perfectly possible for the explanation to be “Well, that’s how they thought it worked, but they were wrong,” but in that case, one has to at least think about how likely it is that every magician in this world, for however-many years magic has been working, has believed that they can only start fires on Wednesdays…and why nobody, not even some ignorant kid who doesn’t know any better, has never, ever tried to use fire-starting magic on any other day of the week.
Consistency can be achieved in several ways: by working out the rules for magic in advance and then following them; by writing the story and then examining every scene where magic is done or talked about, deducing the rules, and then making sure all those scenes work the way they’re supposed to; or by having a really, really good feel for what works or doesn’t work in this particular story. I doubt that the author of Like Water for Chocolate had an elaborately worked out set of rules for how magic worked in that story, but the scenes work…in part, I think, because the author makes no effort whatsoever to explain them. They feel right, so they are.
Intuitive and magical-realism writers do have to be a bit careful that they aren’t mistaking “What a super-cool idea; I must write this no matter what, and to heck with the rest of the story” for “This odd little scene just feels right for this story.” I’ve seen several stories that were, for my tastes, ruined because the author simply couldn’t resist writing a cool scene that was incompatible with whatever they’d said or implied about how magic worked. I find that even more unsatisfying than a deus ex machina, because one assumes that a god would have the power and ability to interfere if they wanted, it’s just that they generally don’t bother. If you absolutely love Fourth of July fireworks and want to write a magic scene involving them, find a story where that scene will fit; don’t stick it in the middle of your semi-historical tale about the building of the Pyramids (or at the very least, don’t call them Fourth of July fireworks, and give me some explanation as to how and when gunpowder got invented early in Egypt and what effect it’s had on your less-and-less-historical society).
Rules-based writers, on the other hand, run the risk of making magic look, sound, and feel exactly like science and technology. I’ve also seen stories in which the plot seemed to revolve around gaming whatever arbitrary magic system the author had invented – “These are the rules, and look how clever my hero is being at using them in unexpected ways!” They always give me the feeling that the writer deliberately designed the magic system with a bunch of loopholes just so their hero could exploit them, rather than that the hero was terribly clever and inventive.
Next time, I’m going to talk more specifically about what I have and haven’t done in making up the magic systems in my books, and then if there’s interest in some of the specifics of doing the actual writing itself.
""Magick Made Easy provides a simple, direct, first step into the world of Wicca for those who are curious about witchcraft but unsure where to start. A well stocked reference text and an introduction to spellcrafting basics that is easy to relate to." -- Francesca De Grandis, author of "Be A Goddess! A Guide to Celtic Spells and Wisdom for Self-Healing, Prosperity, and Great Sex "I found "Magick Made Easy" to be a practical and resourceful guide to folk magick and lore. It is written with warmth and is sure to be a delight for the beginner."-- Raven Grimassi, author of "The Wiccan Mysteries""Patricia Telesco is a four star spiritual chef and in "Magick Made Easy she skillfully blends inspiring insights with useful examples and an impressive list of thoroughly researched, easily available ingredients. With this helpful book, anyone--novice or adept--can create personal magic which nourishes the soul."-- High Priestess Phyllis Curott, J.D., author of "Book of Shadows""This book really does make Magick easy.and understandable and user-friendly! Patricia Telesco makes us understand that we all perform simple magickal acts each day, but rarely do we think about it. The mother who cooks dinner, thinking about how healthy she keeps her family, the jeweler who creates works of art, hoping they will enhance the beauty the wearer, the taxi or bus driver who focuses on delivering their passengers safely to their destination: all these people are performing Magick. Here we find out how wishing works and that by visualizing success in that new job, we can increase the possibilities of good fortune. Thank you, Trish, for clear explanations and inspired insights that make Magick and Wonder accessibleto everyone!"-- Frank and Cate Dalton, organizers of CraftWise"Hurray for Patricia Telesco and "Magick Made Easy!" There are no obscure ingredients to buy, and absolutely no guesswork. With this book, even the Scarecrow could meet with magickal success!"-- Dorothy Morrison, author of "Everyday Magic""If you have been hungering for a book that makes magick easy to understand and use, this is your lucky day! "Magick Made Easy" is a supernatural feast of fun, filled with spellcraft secrets and folk magick fundamentals. Premier kitchen witch Patricia Telesco shows you how to make powerful magick with the ordinary things around your home or workplace. Delightful, empowering, and highly recommended, "Magick Made Easy" is the perfect book for the 21st Century witch!" -- Sirona Knight, author of "Love, Sex, and Magick, The Shapeshifter Tarot, " and Contributing Editor for "Magical Blend" magazine"An undaunting and friendly introduction to magic, full of common sense and with a useful list of correspondences."-- Starhawk, author of "The Spiral Dance
This trick involves choosing a random card from a deck and then predicting its identity before it is even revealed. The secret to this trick lies in the preparation beforehand. Patricia explains how to secretly mark the chosen card and then use various techniques to reveal the prediction to the audience. This trick is sure to leave everyone amazed and wondering how it was done. In addition to these tricks, Patricia also shares other easy magic tricks that can be performed with everyday objects such as pencils, rubber bands, and even paper clips. She demonstrates how to make objects disappear, reappear, and even transform right before your eyes. The key to these tricks is knowing the right techniques and misdirection to keep the audience focused on the illusion. What sets Patricia apart is her passion for teaching magic and making it accessible to everyone. She believes that magic is a fun and entertaining form of art that should be enjoyed by people of all ages. With her easy-to-follow tutorials and guidance, anyone can learn and perform these magic tricks with confidence and skill. So, if you're looking to add a bit of magic to your life or impress your friends and family, Patricia's easy magic tricks are the way to go. With a little practice and a touch of showmanship, you too can become a magician and leave your audience in awe. Get ready to create some magic and let Patricia be your guide on this enchanting journey into the world of easy magic..
Reviews for "Patricia Reveals 5 Easy Magic Tricks You Can Learn in Minutes"
1. James - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Easy magic with Patricia". The tricks were not as easy as the title suggested. Patricia's explanations were convoluted and hard to follow, making it difficult for a beginner like me to understand. I was left feeling frustrated and discouraged. I would not recommend this DVD to anyone looking to learn magic.
2. Sarah - 1 star - As someone who has always been interested in magic, I found "Easy magic with Patricia" to be a complete waste of time. The tricks she demonstrated were uninspiring and outdated. I was hoping to learn some impressive tricks that would amaze my friends, but instead, I was left with a collection of mediocre tricks that felt like they belonged in a children's magic set. I would advise anyone looking to learn magic to look elsewhere.
3. Mike - 2 stars - I found "Easy magic with Patricia" to be lacking in substance. The DVD was poorly produced, with low-quality video and audio. The tricks demonstrated were basic and lacked originality. Patricia's explanations were rushed and lacked clarity, making it difficult to understand the proper techniques. Overall, I was not impressed with this DVD and would not recommend it to anyone looking to learn magic.
4. Emily - 2 stars - I was excited to try "Easy magic with Patricia" as a beginner in the world of magic, but unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations. The tricks were not as easy as advertised, and I found myself struggling to understand the explanations provided. Patricia seemed disinterested and unenthusiastic throughout the DVD, which made it even more difficult to engage with the content. I was left feeling discouraged and dissatisfied with my purchase. I would advise others to explore other resources for learning magic.