Close-up magic, the card and coin tricks performed inches from your face, seems like the least useful skill to have at the end of the world. But magic is really the study of attention: what people notice, what they miss and how easily they can be steered. That turns out to matter a great deal in a crisis. Here is what magic can teach a survivor, and why a deck of cards might be one of the best things in your pack.
Magic is the science of attention
Magicians have known for centuries what psychologists now study in labs: people can only attend to a little at a time, and they look where they’re led. A magician’s misdirection works by giving the audience something more interesting to watch at the exact moment the secret move happens. Researchers have collaborated with magicians, including Teller of Penn & Teller and the theatrical pickpocket Apollo Robbins, to study exactly how this works.
For a survivor, the lesson cuts both ways. You can use it: a noise on one side of a building draws attention away from the other. And you should guard against it: when something dramatic happens, look around for what else is happening.
Magicians at war
Governments have recruited magicians in real conflicts. In 1856, France sent the celebrated magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin to Algeria to demonstrate that French “magic” was stronger than that of local holy men stirring up rebellion. In World War II, the stage magician Jasper Maskelyne joined a British camouflage unit, though historians think many of the famous illusions credited to him are exaggerated. Either way, deception has always been part of survival.
Spot the con
Every technique a magician uses for wonder, a con artist uses for theft. Street games like three-card monte rely on sleight of hand and accomplices who appear to win. After a disaster, scams multiply: fake charities, fake repair crews and too-good-to-be-true trades. Learning even a few tricks makes you much harder to fool, because you start to see how it’s done.
Morale
The best reason to learn magic, though, is simpler. A good trick produces a moment of pure delight, and in a long, grim crisis those moments are precious. Magic needs no power and almost no equipment. A deck of cards, a coin and a rubber band will entertain children and adults alike for an evening. Performers in hospitals, refugee camps and war zones have used it to give people a few minutes of wonder.
Where to start
- Learn one self-working card trick: a trick that relies on math rather than sleight of hand. There are dozens, and you can perform one tonight.
- Practice a simple coin vanish in front of a mirror until it fools you.
- Study the patter, not just the move. The story you tell is where the misdirection lives.
- Then perform for someone who needs cheering up.
Do you know a trick? Tell us in the comments which one never fails to get a reaction.