Should I Learn Magic from Books or Videos?
My sister got a magic kit for Christmas one year. I was four - a full twenty years before I got my first magic book and long before magic videos even existed. We would be down in our basement playing and she’d frustrate the living daylights out of me. She performed amazing mysteries such as holding a wand in her hand and commanding it to rise nearly its full length. I also remember a set of luggage tags of different colors. When I handed her one of them behind her back, she could tell me what color it was nearly instantly.
My pleas for answers fell on deaf ears. She took her task quite seriously! I would practically beg, “Pleeeeeease! Tell me how it works!” And her reply was brutal. She’d hold up the instruction book and with an air of authority, she’d point to the text, “It says right here that the magician should never reveal the secrets of the magic. So, I can’t tell you!” This would repeat until I was almost in tears. Soon, I stopped watching her magic.
How difficult can it be to learn without any books?
My first efforts to learn magic happened when I was about seven or eight. I remember getting a magic trick by sending in fifteen Dum-Dum wrappers and a dollar bill. A few weeks later, I received plastic apparatus with little door panels on the front and back and a plastic insert decorated with rabbit imagery. I don't recall what the exact effect was. I just knew that I performed it terribly.
I should explain that this happened when I lived in Tennessee. I grew up in the small town of Sparta. - no magicians, no magic shops. I had no resources to learn from. My early attempts at magic were merely showing what the prop does. Those were the limits of my "presentation." I was rather introverted anyway, so creating fanciful presentations was not a natural thing for me. The "fire" that many in our field possess never took hold of me. And there was no more interest in magic until many years later…
I didn't learn magic until...
After I left a six-year enlistment in the Navy, I moved back to Tennessee. I met a guy who showed me a simple coin trick. He took a coin into his hand, and a brief moment later, he opened his hand to reveal it had vanished. Before the amazement could set in, he showed me how it worked.
It baffled me.
Not the effect, I was baffled by the fact that he so readily revealed the secret. I remember even saying to him, “Why did you show me how it works? I don't know anything about magic except that you're not supposed to reveal how it's done.”
But I did learn it. I practiced when I could, off and on, for two days or so. I showed it to a friend. Her response changed my life forever, “Oh wow, how did you do that?”
That's what lit the fire.
It blew my mind! This actually worked! I did this tricky, secret thing to fool another person! The experience changed me at a fundamental level. I needed to learn as much magic as I could. At the age of 24, I had suitably gained my first coin sleight.
When I was a little boy, my father would always tell me, “If there’s something out there you want to learn - it doesn’t matter what it is - somebody has written a book about it. So whatever you want to learn, go out and get a book on that subject!”
So I looked for magic books. I found a green, softcover printing of Modern Coin Magic by J.B. Bobo. I browsed through the decidedly UN-modern illustrations and descriptions and fell in love. On a side note, this happened over 20 years ago. I still have (and refer to) that book to this very day.
I got a roll of half-dollar coins from the bank and set to work becoming a miracle-worker. But it was slow progress. After a year of studying that one book, my resulting magic was…awful. I could competently perform many of the effects described in the book. However, I was still lacking that crucial skill of presentation. Meeting other magicians certainly helped - as did watching some of the early instructional videos that were released. I saved my money and picked up the VHS taps of David Roth.
The magic videos that changed everything for me.
For those who are just getting into the art, You may not know the name David Roth. Roth was one of the modern legends of coin magic. When we lost David on January 15, 2021, it was a tremendous blow to the magic world. He will always be one of the greatest coin magicians of all time.
Penn & Teller: Fool Us "Star Spangled Magic" © 2015 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved
His series “Expert Coin Magic Made Easy (vols. 1, 2, and 3)” is the definitive magic video set on learning basic to advanced coin work. And I knew he was a master because, in the first effect of the first volume, he fooled me badly with magic I had already learned from Bobo!
How can this be? I knew what those tricks were and how they work. So why did they fool me? In the Bobo book, I simply had no visual reference. Books can only explain so much. Seeing with my eyes how beautiful it could look made me acutely aware of the vast gulf between my skill and my ambition.
Why am I telling this story? Do I think videos are more valuable than books? Are books better than video? They both have their place. But your journey into magic should incorporate both.
Learning magic is a personal journey. But getting information from video solely will limit the scope of material that you are exposed to. If you read only the books, you’re denying yourself a visual confirmation that accelerates the learning process. Find a proper balance, but don’t tip the scales too far in one direction.
For a great example, check out The Mexican Turnover: Reborn. It combines video modules plus written descriptions that also provide extra details. You can read more on David Roth here.