Keeping a secret

[Yves Tourigny]

French magicians are very serious about keeping a secret. I have just finished reading Daniel Rhod's Virtuel Magie. It is a very good book but the stand out for me was the trick that gives a solution to the cliche challenge: The spectator takes the deck, shuffles it, choose a card, put it back in the deck and shuffles it again then challenges you to find it. The solution is impromtu, with no secret preparation before hand, no stooge whatsoever and can be done with any deck. It is almost to good to be true but it works very well.

Coming back to the title subject, the book is very expensive, almost a hundred US dollars and.... in order to decipher it from the book you have to use a mirror to be able to read it. This was done to not permit a casual reader to get access to this secret by just perusing the book. In general, european magic items be it books, videos or tricks is very expensive so people who buy these thing aren't very prone to share it freely. I am not saying that we follow them but there is something to be said about their way of keeping the secret well ... secret.

Yves Tourigny :rolleyes:

[Yves Tourigny]

Oops wanted to add that the trick mentionned above is the only one in the book that necessitates a mirror in order to read it.

Yves Tourigny :D

[Guest]

I agree that the casual exposure of magic techniques is more rampant here than in some other places,but tactics like making the text of an explaination readable only via a mirror strikes me as more romantic than practical--I'd hate trying to learn anything that way.It also seems that anyone intent on reading the information would deduce the method without too much trouble. As to making material even more expensive,I have a house and car payment to make every month and shelling out fifty bucks for a book or thirty for a video already seems prohibitively high to me.I can't imagine that anyone with just a casual intrest in learning secrets would be willing to pay that kind of money,unless they have a lot of money and free time--in which case they'd probably be willing to pay an even higher price.So I really don't see this as a viable solution. Just my opinion. :)

[Jon Armstrong]

Maybe it's just me but I belive with the flood of stuff on the market today secrets are just not as valued today as there were in the past at any price. I am not that old but I still remember back when you had to learn from books. Today I know so many guys that have never opened a magic book in there life. I find this sad as print I feel is the best way to really learn anything. Video just makes you copy what you see and I can't take another Ammar clone. One is bad enough.

Jon
www.cardjon.com