talkmagic.co.uk

Hello, my name is Sean Monaghan and I am currently studying an English degree at the University of Southampton, where I have also founded a magic society.

I consider myself a skilled performer, although I do not claim to be perfect. There are still a lot of areas that I need to work on. I am best at using cards, although I have begun to study coinwork (mostly from Bobo's Modern Coin Magic) and have taken an interest in mentalism.

I am also a moderator at http://www.magichat.co.uk.

That's basically me.

Welcome. I hope that you enjoy your stay

Hiya...welcome, sounds like you'll slip right in (if you'll pardon the pun)

Hi and welcome. I had a look at your site and its look like a nice place for beginners. To me it does not look like an exposure site any more than any magic shop. Of course I hope you respect other magicians rights and for example do not expose market effects without the creators getting their fair share of the profit.

Hello Sean and welcome to TM.
Hope you will enjoy yourself around here.
Best greetings from Iceland!

Welcome

Everyone, thanks for the welcome; I'm sure to have a great time here.

Soren Riis wrote:Of course I hope you respect other magicians rights and for example do not expose market effects without the creators getting their fair share of the profit.

We have a team working on the acceptance of tricks which prevents any copyrighted tricks from being accepted, and we advocate personal development of the tricks themselves. And hopefully our forums are helpful to beginners and more advanced alike!

I'm not so sure about this site Soren, there are definitely tricks on there that are for sale elsewhere. And how can the creater get his share of the profit if they are free. Needs further investigation me thinks.

If you notice any, please let me know and our administrator will remove them. We try our hardest not to let copyright effects through, but the review team does not own every purchasable effect, so some may get through!

Ah... sorry!

I take back my welcomes to you from before.
I had not taken the time to look at your website and it definetely rubs me the wrong way.

I agree wtih StevieJ. You are revealing a lot of magic tricks, sleights and secrets that a true magician should keep to himself/herself. I don't understand the people that have to reveal every single trick or sleight they learn.

• What fun is it to know a trick that everybody else in the audience knows how it works?
• What motivates you to teach in details, even posting a YouTube video, of magic tricks and sleights?
• How can you relate to yourself as a magician, when you reveal magic on mass scale?

No, you are definetely a disgrace to the magic society and you can actually not call yourself a magician. You are a traitor to the ethics of magicians!

As part of the creative team at Magic Hat, I am always interested to hear when people have disagreements the website. However, I expect proper criticism such as StevieJ has given, and not outright insults.

Before I begin my defence, I would like to draw your attention to the words of Paul Daniels in his book, Adult Magic:

Paul Daniels wrote:Most people assume that magic is a difficult subject to get into. This popular misconception is probably nurtured by the prevailing belief that magicians as a body are highly secretive people who would rather die an agonising death than reveal a secret, letting nothing slip even under the most extreme duress.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Every trick, every secret method and principle has been published and is in print. How else can people become magicians and sustain their interest, without access to the literature of magic, this enormous treasure-house of material. Magicians have been exposing their secrets to the general public for centuries. The popular weekly and monthly magazines of the late Victorian and early Edwardian period were undoubtedly the seedbed that published much of the magic we categorise today as public domain. Books and pamphlets flourished, often attracting would be purchasers by their lurid covers. Note the price of the example illustrated here, published over sixty years ago.

The picture referred to is for 'Amateur Conjuring' which cost 6d.

It seems that your insulting reaction to my advertisment was a knee-jerk one. If you had spent some time actually looking at the effects, and the manner in which people learn the secrets, then you would have discovered the access system.

Upon registry, a user recieves an access level of one, which may be increased by an additional one if the newsletter is subscribed to. In order to raise the level higher, several questions about magic must be answered. And in order to raise the level higher than seven, the member must have made a contribution to the community; often in the submission of a trick of their own design.

I would also like to point out that the website advocates the teaching of effects rather than the revealing of the secrets. A stringent review and editing process is put in place to provide this most effectively.

This review process also aims to prevent copyright material from being let through, and at times we may make a mistake. In that case, we are more than happy to rectify it, and remove the method. This has happened three times in the past.

I will also admit that there are some tricks which appear in purchasable print, but these are for classic effects and sleights, such as the DL or basic shuffle control. These are arguably public domain, since every card book contains these. Noone holds copyright over the effect, although the copyright of text is different. In order to combat this, Magic Hat prevents the copying and pasting into the trick submission form.

It's possible that things will always get through. If this is the case, then I would appreciate it if we were alerted in a sensible and mature manner.

I hope that you realise that our methods of teaching get past the possibility of mass exposure: and I will also say that I feel there is nothing wrong in magicians sharing their own material, and teaching people who may not have the funds or capability to purchase other effects.

Everyone who has submitted material to Magic Hat is happy for it to be available for free. This includes several professionals who also sell their own material.

I came to this website hoping to talk about magic in a mature and sensible way. I will ignore the effect that your post initially had on me and stay here, because I feel that there is much I can gain from talkmagic.

If you have a problem with my activity at Magic Hat, I would ask that you discuss it in a mature way and not reduce yourself to having to hurl insults at a newcomer to the website.

Every trick, every secret method and principle has been published and is in print. How else can people become magicians and sustain their interest, without access to the literature of magic, this enormous treasure-house of material.

Very true, but he is talking about books that have been printed and sold to those seeking magic knowledge, not exposing for free on the internet, even magic that other magicians have spent years into inventing and developing. Having it exposed on website like yours.

Don't take the words of great magicians and twist them, trying to justify your revealing website. If you were publishing your own invention or licensed magic, that would be something different. You are not!

...and I will also say that I feel there is nothing wrong in magicians sharing their own material...

Exactly. Limit your teaching on your website to your own material!

gunnarkr wrote:Very true, but he is talking about books that have been printed and sold to those seeking magic knowledge

Mmmm its that money thing again... lol... bring on the entertainment.

Just to clarify, I spend far too much time reading forums on the internet.. any forum I can find relating to magic I can find I will read, I put ethics aside as I far as I'm concerned theres no place for them on a faceless voiceless world we call the internet.

I must admit I enjoy reading the posts on this site but as usual with any site of this nature I enjoy even more the antics of the "magicians" and their passion.

The site in question although not to my taste as it is mostly frequented by american teenagers as are a lot of forums these days.. but in its defense I would say it probably has the best methods of being a site to talk about magic as opposed to being an exposure site due to the methods of access allowed, and trust me there are a LOT worse sites out there if expousure is your worry.

It makes me chuckle to see people asking for introductions here all the time as I could post one and lie.. who would know? and now when someone does and is honest look what happens.

I'll be at Blackpool this year and will again meet a lot of old friends and make some new ones and I look forward too it, we will all talk magic and swop ideas like real people do ( I might even purchase some effects)... and I will be very surprised if this sort of conversation crops up.

Food for thought huh?

May I ask your opinion on public libraries? The first magic book I picked up from a library, where I didn't pay for it.

You may also note that I do not pin my argument on the quote from Paul Daniels. I rather use it to set the scene, and wish to make it aware that the quote itself is over fifteen years old. Major technological developments have occurred since there.

In my opinion, the internet can easily be allied to public libraries in this sense, and I once again state that we make all efforts to only publish our own material. If you have direct statements as to which we are wrongly publishing, please alert me to them specifically.

I am not expecting you to immediately come round to my opinion, as I understand that your thinking and ethics are based on your personal upbringing and opinion. What I ask is that you can rationalise.

I think I have to agree with MoritaNaoki on this one.

Gunnarkr, I wonder if your extreme attitude toward fellow magicians has led you to writing nasty letters to the Masked magician and Penn & Teller. I am sure you know about them so I won't insult your intelligence. I was just curious, because you called Morita a disgrace and a traitor. Both of which are very harsh words to say to someone you know nothing about.

You also speak to him as Magic Hat is his website, this is not the case. He said that he is a moderator there, not the creator. So ease up on the castration.

Now on to the subject at hand.

I started my magic career in the libraries. I can tell you from being rather poor growing up, without the library having books on magic, I would not be where I am today. I can relate to people not having money and needing a little bit of help to achieve their passion. Do you not condone the teaching magic in a library? As you must know those books were once in circulation and were sold by the author. Then once they dropped out of circulation were sold to libraries, more than likely, worldwide. So now their magical contribution is being given away to anyone that wants to learns. So let me ask you this: How is this any different from Magic Hat's contribution. Because it is on the internet? That is a bogus argument and holds no water in this conversation at all.

Why should magic only be for the rich, to perform and to watch.

Magic is for everyone, that is the way it always has been and always should be.

Wikipedia even reveals simple sleights in its database. Have you written to them with you hateful words? Lets ease up a bit, this is a brotherhood.

As he has explained to you, the tricks on Magic Hat are composed of user created tricks. Yes there are sleights, and yes there are tricks from books and possible from videos. As Morita was saying, all of these are classic effects are just about as common knowledge as sawing a woman in half or (thanks to P&T) cups and balls, but have been rewritten to avoid plagiarism. In order to access these greater effects you need to have higher access proving that you are a magician or a serious magic student.

I see nothing wrong with Magic Hat's contribution. The site does nothing different than any library world wide, and will teach magic to anyone that wants to learn. That sir, is great for magic!