Jason wrote a terrific foreword to my $(removed) card magic e-book, Trick Decks: How to Hack Playing Cards for Extraordinary Magic, and has kindly given me permission to reprint it here. Jason was instrumental in rekindling my interested in magic, so I was thrilled to have him write it. Thank you, Jason!
What Mark teaches you, in this fantastic book, is magic. Magic you can appreciate immediately, and marvel at its workings without ever performing for more than yourself.
Herein lie activities that are fun for the whole family!
Activities that create illusions you’ll never forget – or forget how they work!
The entire STEM course load that is so popular today is here in Spades! Clubs! Hearts! Diamonds!
It is truly magic on so many levels.
So much about magic is intentionally damn confusing. I have a large library of books on card magic. Few of them are comprehensible to folks who don’t spend hours trying to figure out how to use them! It is like law school! Fancy names for card sleights that are harder to remember than the moves themselves, illustrations from Lascaux, and dialect from the renaissance-faire are frequently used to keep the barrier to entry high.
Mark has worked hard to share easy, achievable methods to get immediate, amazing results. You can delight in magic in a way that took me over a decade, working with only a single deck of Bicycle 808 playing cards and a candle, in a damp, dark room, trying to perfect a double lift. I have not, but never fear! The room is still damp!
You will be amazing anyone you choose within an hour or so. I’ve seen it happen!
There are many, many different sorts of magic. I’m a fan of close-up card magic, and I like to learn sleights of hand. Some folks like to shove doves in their pants and wiggle them out at opportune times. Thing is, it is still magic, and I still love it!
The type of magic Mark is teaching you is amazing in and of itself, but I think of his book as the first step in learning to create my own illusions. The mechanics are all there, each trick you learn, each deck you build, is a basic building block for what can become your own very specialized illusions. If you really get into it, you’ll find an amazing world of resources and information exist, and a vibrant community of folks who love to spend their time making things that confound!
Then they’ll refuse to share their secrets with you!
Actually, not true at all! Folks who are enthusiastic about magic love to share it with other enthusiastic people! Want a great place to start? Find your local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians! Those folks are pretty cool! They have an amazing magazine called the Linking Ring, hold meet-ups, conventions, and have a great community. My dues are probably in arrears.
Have fun with Mark’s book.
– Jason Weisberger
Learn more about my book at the Trick Decks website.
