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What if the tricks you currently do with sleight of hand, gaffs, etc could be done "for real" with magic? What use would they be in real life? And would it be any different to doing it the way we do at the moment?

Why and when would you want a card to disappear from a deck of cards and appear in your wallet? Or get a cap into a bottle. Or a coin come out of someone's ear. Or turn a deck of cards into a block of plastic. Or make a coin bend in someone's hand. Maybe the miser's dream would be useful - but how many hours a day would you spend making money appear? I suppose it's better than a proper job, but I bet it would get boring after a while - especially if you've got to keep doing it to pay the mortgage each month. And do you have to pay tax on money that you make appear out of thin air?

So, apart from working as a magician (!) or winning money gambling at cards, how would you use your new found "real magic" skills?

Im of the opinion that all the things we can do as Magicians just wouldnt be done at all if we genuinely had the power to do such things!!!

Mark Waddington wrote:Im of the opinion that all the things we can do as Magicians just wouldnt be done at all if we genuinely had the power to do such things!!!

That's true. Where would you keep all those pesky rabbits and doves?

Some people say to me 'you are a wizard'.

I reply: If i realy could do magic, i would'nt be here doing magic tricks would I ??

So i would use my magic to ... euhm... Invent a cure on aids, give water to the poor,..... I would be some kind of super hero i guess

Greetings from Beglium

I'm thinking more of the kind of magic that we can do, and what if that was real. What real world use is there for making a card jump to the top of the deck or turning itself over in the middle?

One of the only coin effects I do is a production of coins from a piece of cloth/handkerchief which is seemingly impossible as the cloth is borrowed. I usually perform it to kids or when someone needs a few coins, never doing the effect just for the fun of it, only when it is really needed.

Funnily enough, I was inspired by a version I saw on The Illusionist.

TheStoner wrote:I'm thinking more of the kind of magic that we can do, and what if that was real. What real world use is there for making a card jump to the top of the deck or turning itself over in the middle?

Entertainment?

Mark Waddington wrote:Im of the opinion that all the things we can do as Magicians just wouldnt be done at all if we genuinely had the power to do such things!!!

AMEN!

I think creating paper money from blank paper is pretty close to what I'd do everytime I went shopping if I could do it for real

Mark Waddington wrote:Im of the opinion that all the things we can do as Magicians just wouldnt be done at all if we genuinely had the power to do such things!!!

Not quite all, but very close. Producing money or other objects could be handy, especially the "sheets of paper to folding money" effect (the actual name of which escapes me - LPB has mentioned it too). Shrinking or (ahem) enlarging things could also be good. You could carry your whole wardrobe in your carry-on luggage for a flight. Restoring a torn card might be pretty useless, but how about shredded documents?

When you get into the realm of stage illusions, you start hitting the stuff that might actually be done if you could work real magic. Flying, disappearing from one place and reappearing somewhere else and putting together someone who'd been cut in half, or who'd had a head or limb removed. Interestingly, the last category are often portrayed more as "magician can pass a blade through someone who remains unharmed" than as a miraculous restoration. Something to think about, perhaps!

A lot of mentalism, in its "truest" form, could be very handy. Predicting the future could earn you a lot more money in one quick go than a day's worth of 'Miser's Dream'.

Now you're talking! As you say it's probably the mentalism field that offers most "real world" applications - in particular for evil-doing! No-one who wears that much black could be anything but evil.

TheStoner wrote:No-one who wears that much black could be anything but evil.

Agreed!

If i had the power to put a coin trough a bottle, maybe i would have the power to walk trough walls. That could come in handy. I'm thinking of;

-Shortcuts
-Working as a spie
-Punshing a bad guy and then running away
-Steal from the rich and give to the poor
-Spie on the hot chick next door
-....

Greetings from belgium

Why not steal from the rich and give the money to the "hot chick"? Then you wouldn't need to spy on her. Unless she objected to your sexism, vigilantism and general criminality!

This is exactly why most close-up magic strikes me as rather trivial - it's like Teller said, most magicians present themselves as a trivial God who can affect change in the primary world at the snap of the fingers, but without an ounce of genuine conflict. This is also why I really love what Tommy Wonder did, because he had genuine conflict in his work.