talkmagic.co.uk

I spent a rather rushed period of my lunchbreak at International Magic in London whilst on a course last week.

During that ever so brief visit the guy behind the counter, Jerry pointed out a rather big and promising book called Syzygy which I dismissed out of hand as I'd already spent a fortune earlier in the week at Davenport's and couldn't afford the possibility of overdraft fees.

On getting home, I looked it up on t'internet and found only a couple of places offering it for sale for somewhere in the region of £120 quid-pounds. No, it's not a typo, £120 for A BOOK!

Surely at that kind of price the contents must be pure dynamite.
But will it make my life complete? Will it make me whole?

Please help.

SYZYGY "the book" is the compilation of the newsletter produced by Lee Earle over a number of years... a follow-up of sorts to the older MAGICK newsletter produced by Bascom Jones in the 80s... BOTH are dynamite and filled with material you will not find anywhere else. Let me give you one routine from from SYZYGY that I use regularly... it is a simple conversational bit in which you correctly draw the image of a person's Zodiac sign... no anagrams or pre-show, etc. It's an Alain Nu piece... there are Master Memory routines and one of my favorite "book test" ideas using a simple brochure... I can't list it all but I will say that it is all of serious value if you are a serious student of Mentalism... if you just want to know a little bit and hold to magic, then it's not worth the price. In other words, it's not recommended for dabblers.

magicbox have a few of the dvds they did of the material...

abraxus wrote:magicbox have a few of the dvds they did of the material...

Assuming the guy meant the collected first five volumes, the DVDs are roughly $30 (£15) each for a more focused look at the contents. They're much better value if you're only looking for certain things.

Search for "Syzygy's best".

You can pick up the DVDs for less than the book, but there is a huge amount of information in the latter. The price of 'Syzygy: The First Five Years' put me off at first, but there were so many useable effects just in the first few issues (it's a collection of newsletters, as Craig explained), that I consider the book an excellent purchase.

That is, if you want to do mentalism and mental magic. If you're more of a dabbler, then don't bother; the price just doesn't make sense.

In fact, there's more to the book than just effects, including advice on marketing yourself as a reader/psychic entertainer.

It also depends on if you are looking at the magazine or what was known as "The Best of Syzygy" which are basically "lectures" Lee presented based on the magazine's better rated contributions. These can be a great resource for ideas.