Excerpt from
Dick Cavins' Interview with Magnus
Is
Magicians are afraid of real magic.

DC:
One other thing I'd like to touch on, and I hope this isn't a sore subject, you've been criticised, rather harshly in some cases, by other magicians for your views on what you call "Real Magic", and I suppose some of that might be written off to professional jealousy...
M:
I think more likely it's fear.
DC:
Fear?
M:
Magicians are afraid of magic - real magic. That's why the magician in the 20th century has gone from being the Wise Man (or woman) to being the Wise Guy. Comedy magic is the big thing. You see magicians do these incredible impossible things, and create this sense of wonder, and then they blow it with a stupid joke.

Which is just the thing - many modern magicians want to "blow the audience away" - that's distancing, it's from fear. I want to get closer to the audience.

DC:
Just to clarify here, when you talk about "real magic", most people seem to think you're talking about curses and love spells and actual, uhm, supernatural effects... is that really the case?
M:
We talked before about the origins of the stage magician in the function of the Shaman in so-called "primitive" societies, and I think it's quite clear that the effect of shamanic activities goes beyond the famous "placebo" effect, although that is certainly a factor in some cases...

It isn't about tricks and effects.
Sounds almost like mysticism.

M:
"Real Magic" isn't about tricks and illusions, or about curses and spells... "Real Magic" is about the transformation of consciousness, an opening to greater possibilities...

A famous magician - of the "occult" variety - once defined Magic as "the Art and Science of causing Change in conformity with Will".

DC:
So is "real magic" about imposing your will on others, or on the world...?
M:
Not really, you have to remember that in this context "Will" is taken to mean something a little different from "want" or "desire",it's greater "Will", almost in the sense that the Christian mystic says "not my will, but Thine, O Lord", except that in the magical view, "God" is not something separate and distinct from the speaker, that is, we are each of us, in some sense, the Divine, and it is that Divine aspect that we refer to as our True Will.
DC:
You seem to be talking about almost a sort of mysticism, or transcendentalism, like TM or something...
M:
Meditation certainly has it's place, but where the eastern forms approach the Divine in a passive sense,
...western magickal practice, on the other hand, takes a more active role in the process. Where eastern practices would eliminate the conscious ego-self entirely, the western tradition seeks to use that conscious self, perfect and transform it, as the alchemists spoke of transmuting lead into gold...


I don't quite see where Stage Magic fits in...
It's another tool in the process.
DC:
I have heard it said that the alchemists never really intended to actually turn real lead into real gold, but that this was a metaphorical language they used to refer to a spiritual process...
M:
Exactly.
DC:
But I don't quite see where magic - I mean stage magic - comes into this.
M:
It's another tool in the process. It's a way of altering your state of consciousness...
M:
When you see a well-performed piece of stage magic, there's what Paul Harris calls the "Moment of Astonishment", that moment of "Wow" when the trick happens, and your whole world view falls away, when the subconscious mind is open and receptive. For that split second, before the conscious rational mind kicks in, there's this space where the magic is real, where all things are possible, where "I", the viewer, participate in the magic, where I may even participate in, or be one with, the Divine.
sort of a representation of something else?
it points beyond itself.
DC:
So stage magic becomes a sort of representation of something else...
M:
Ideally, yeah, the effect points beyond itself to a greater mystery. If I do an effect, and the audience is thinking "How did he do that", I've failed.
DC:
And you've succeeded if...?
M:
I've succeeded if, even in some small way, I've taken them on an initiatory journey, I've opened them up to other possibilities, to the possibility of another kind of magic, or a deeper mystery in life.

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