From early Italian and Spanish suits Bastone and Baston (basto), translates into club, being a stick of sorts. This archetypal stick has been called many names besides club. The playing card suit clubs is the counter-part to the suit of staves, rods, or wands in the Tarot. The wand represents imagination, creativity, originality, passion, and enthusiasm. The staff or club is an obvious phallic symbol, is synonymous with the male and activity, motion or energy and the Yod of the tetragrammaton. I always think of the wand as representing sight and the visual senses, therefor a symbol of symbols. To follow the path of your desires by picking up your staff and setting out on an adventure regardless of the risk.
The staff also represents the element of fire, those qualities that are often associated with the staff including the aforementioned are sometimes thought of as burning, such as burning passion. Of course any tool can be used in positive or a negative manner, and the wand is no exception. Following your desires and passions can lead to successful fulfillment of an objective, or abuse and unhealthy risky behavior.

The symbol for this suit was a literal “club” until the 15th century when the french trefoil was adopted for the club suit. This suit represented agriculture According to Encyclopedia Britannica online, the first reference to a club with the meaning, “to associate”, was in the year 1670, apparently from,”to form a mass like the thick end of a club.” In forming a club you are forming a consensus group, forming a consensus is a key tool which is used today to create what we think is reality. Humans love to assume they have a complete understanding of reality. What ever the majority of the people think is true, that is what we call reality. Over used example but , the reality used to be that the world was flat. The reality in the middle east is that Allah is the one true God and Mohamed is His profit. The reality in the middle of the United States is that Mohamed didn’t really matter that much it was Jesus which is the way to salvation. Advertising is one way of forming a consensus but organizing is another, another name for club is organization. Find and meet like minded people, read, research and exchange views. To organize is simply to focus your energy on a specific subject. You must focus time and energy on an idea to begin to form a consensus. There is always an agenda or at least a perspective that every bit of information you acquire has linked to it. If the information was given to you by someone you admire and respect or think an expert in the field and it seems to make sense you will most likely accept the message as fact. We also assume things to be true though association. When someone retells something he saw, he can only tell it from his perspective, he only has a hint of the whole truth. Everyone naturally twists information around to fit the views they hold as true, even if the information is taken in visually. My wife and I can be at the same party at the same time see the same things, when it comes to each of us retelling the events it’s as if we were at two different parties. First of all she has to start the story three days before the party, but that’s for another day. Certain people also twist meanings and juggle semantics to achieve the desired result. You may think of politics and “spin doctors”, but this only scratches the surface of the concept that reality is as mutable as clay. As Robert Anton Wilson put it each of us has our own “reality tunnel”. Each of us because of our own experiences and the information we acquire, have our own world view. We cannot trust our senses, and our perceptions are changing over time. “How can I be sure, in a world that’s constantly changing?” All we really ever have is allegory. These are the secrets of magic...

Symbols
Everything that we remember is mapped into our brain with pictures, symbols. Letters and words are pictures but a large amount of text is hard to memorize, if company’s ad executive can show you one or a few letters as a logo, changing that text into a picture always using the same shape and colors, he brands his product in a powerful way. The advertisers simply map their products into your brain, as a logo. Now that, is magic. You can learn these techniques to create your own brands and by realizing the way the brain processes information, and studying the uses of symbols, powerful tools become available such as mnemonics. The company’s logo is a mnemonic trick for remembering their products, whether you want to, or not. .

Mnemonics, in it’s simplest form, is a technique of mentally linking random words or items with a previously memorized prearranged list of symbols. Allowing you to recall a long list of random items by memory. Here is a simple version of the memory test my wife and I used to perform impromptu. Start by memorizing the following list.

One / Gun
Two/ Shoe
Three/ Tree
Four/ Floor
Five / Hive
Six / Sticks
Seven / Heaven
Eight / Skate
Nine / Wine
Ten / Pen

Now it is a simple matter to memorize a list of 10 randomly selected items by associating the words in your list. Say the first item they select is a painting, you simply connect the painting with the Gun from the list, simply make a mental picture of the gun shooting the painting. Then lets say the second item is a packet of sugar, picture the shoe stepping in the packet, or pouring the sugar from the packet into the shoe, any mental picture will work. Continue through the list mentally picturing each selected item with the listed listed rhyming item. Now ask them name any number and you are instantly able to name the object at that number.

The Wand
The power of the wand is pure “focus of attention”. Touch someone on the left shoulder they turn towards the left, you didn’t tell them to, you didn’t ask, they just reacted to your stimulus. Using these natural human responses you can increase your power of control over the spectator. Strike a match and toss it to the floor in mixed company, just to watch how long people will watch the match, if they catch you striking it and tossing it, they will defiantly watch it fall to the floor. People are predictable. Because most people react similar to each other it is possible to deceive large groups of people with one bit of physical action, such as dropping a lit match on stage at the same moment secretly obtaining a deck of cards. This is usually called mis-direction. Mis-direction is a single word that gets an idea across, but it really is not an accurate depiction of the entire concept, of leading your audience at all times. I prefer the term,”focus of attention”, because it describes an ongoing process throughout the entire performance. Mis-direction usually refers to an act used to divert attention at a specific moment for a specific purpose. This idea of focus of attention, or keeping the focus, includes all of your individual misdirection moments and everything else in between, it is the idea that the spectator is lead down a path by the magician, a path so interesting that he doesn’t desire to leave the path. Just like watching a good movie, and not thinking about actors performance, or the set locations, or the flaws in the storyline, or the impossible things that are happening on the screen, you are “plugged in” and along for the ride. Suffering through a weak movie, your mind wanders, and picks apart the details such as thinking, “that couldn’t happen like that”, while in the other movies you accept the impossible because you are on the path, and into the movie. This wandering of the mind of the audience is when they are likely to backtrack and perhaps stumble onto your method. I am not talking about a mistake in performance, or weak method that a spectator sees though, but an effect that lacks the focus of the audience. The performance must be entertaining. The people watching must be interested by what you are doing and saying, so they don’t have a chance to interrupt the performance with their mind wondering about your methods, easier said than done. Many people come to see a magician with the express purpose figuring out the effects. I have often been watching a comedian and right after a big belly laugh thought to myself,”I have got to remember that joke”, but I don’t want to miss the next laugh so I continue to stay on the comic’s path, and at the end of the performance the show was great, but I can’t remember any of the jokes I wanted to. He kept me on his path, if I get off the path ignore the next joke and set a mnemonic symbol in place, I am much more likely to remember the joke.

It is important that your whole show becomes a path, and a path that leads somewhere. Many times we call a person who is interesting to watch, charismatic, or we say they have a magnetic personality, this person has a certain fluidity and at the same time he permeates a sense that anything can happen next. What we are seeing subliminally, is the thinking process of the performer he is letting us into his thought process. This thought process is sometimes genuine and sometimes contrived but should always seem logical and genuine. Like an actress using facial expressions and body language to express the emotional feelings and thoughts of her character. The audience needs to see the performer thinking. A mistake a lot of young performers make, is believing that the material itself is the entertainment. It is the performers interpretation of the materiel that is the true entertainment. If the audience is on the edge of their seat the mis-direction will have a much stronger effect them. So if they are involved in the story of magic they will be more likely to ignore or not notice a contrivance that is used to mis-direct.

Not to over simplify, but let us start simple with a coin vanish using a wand for mis-direction. The wand is in a top hat on the table the coin is displayed in the right hand the table is on the right side of the magician. To make the coin seem to vanish the magician needs to pretend to place the coin into his left hand. The objective is to give the audience a natural subliminal reason why you put the coin in the other hand, without a reason the audience is likely to believe you did it for no other reason than to accomplish the vanish, which is true. Early on in your performance you have established that the magic happens when you tap with the wand, the wand is the “power”, this is a tool with power. So your set up is important, with the wand and hat to your right, if you were to need the wand you would naturally pick it up with your right hand. If at the time you needed the wand a small object was in your right hand, rather than awkwardly reaching across your body with the left hand and grabbing wand, the natural thing would be to transfer the small object into the left hand and pick up the wand with the right hand. The audience can trace your thought process, and nothing is out of place. So instead you pretend to place the coin in the left hand, retaining it in the right hand. Reach for the wand with the right hand, casually dropping the coin into the hat as you pick up the wand. Your complete focus is on the closed left fist where the coin is supposed to be, then a gentle tap of the wand on the left fist and slowly open the left hand to reveal the coin is gone. The subtle undertones of acting out your thinking process is the key to looking natural. I will break it down further, coin is in the right hand displayed to the audience, a subtle glance to the right, at the wand, lets the spectator in on what you are thinking, which is, “I need that wand”. Then you go strait forward into the move, (pretending to place the coin into the left hand) as you do this do it with the intention of placing it in the other hand only to free up the right hand to pick up the wand. You pick up the wand. Remember nothing has happened yet even though the coin is in the hat and the left fist is already empty, to the audience nothing happens until the tap of the wand. That tap is the moment the coin vanishes to the members of the audience. After the hand is opened the path continues with a smile from the performer, the sub-text of the smile is not only prideful accomplishment, but subtle relief that the wand performed again, then a quick spinning flourish of the wand before placing it back in the hat, the flourish acting almost as a bow for the wand, for it’s part in the magic. The object is to make your thoughts apparent to the audience but your thoughts have got to be based in that fictional world you are creating for your audience, not in the real world.

Let us go back to our young performer who believes the trick itself is the entertainment, he basis his thoughts on reality so he is thinking,“oh dear here comes the move”, if he provides any sense of fear the audience will pickup on it, they are interpreting the performers thoughts all the time. They may be right or wrong about these interpretations it doesn’t matter, most magical performers just learn to mask these “tells” from the audience like a poker player. These subtle glances, pauses, eye-brow raising, and focusing of attention are all interpreted as a man thinking his way through his act. So you can let an audience guess what you are thinking while you are performing or you can control it. Many comics use this as a device for their character to get laughs as they show what they are thinking non-verbally, or say one thing and do the opposite with their body language. Think back how Johnny Carson could make delicious lemonade out of a lemon of a joke with a pause, eye roll, or shrug of the shoulders, followed by a quip of some sort, letting the audience see him think. An audience is going to be observing you on more than one level you may as well be delivering materiel on more than one level as well. This additional materiel is used to further enhance the entertainment value and divert attention away from the true methods.

The way you add this value to your performance is with sub-text, acting on more than one level. As the title of my freshman theatre arts text book stated,”Acting is Believing”. You must believe you are in a real life situation. For example in our oversimplified example with the coin and the wand, you must believe that wand holds the power to accomplish miracles, and because you believe it does, it does.

Stanislavski, and later Lee Strasberg developed a technique of acting called method acting, or “The Method”, where actors use their own past experiences to identify with the character they are playing. The method actor reaches deep into the character development and motivation of the character to achieve realism. They also try to use a similar situation they experienced in their own life to identify with the character and try to relive the experience. The reason I bring this up is because this what I am asking you to do with your magic, analyze the motivation of everything you do. Every single thing.
Work it out so it all makes sense, then crawl inside the fantasy you create and breath true life into it by believing it. This is one way of developing a multidimensional character.

Sam Goldwyn was supposed to have said:”Sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” It seems he hit on the idea of faking this underlying sub-text of your character that most people interpret as the real you. George Burns further related this idea to acting, “The secret of acting,” George Burns said, “is sincerity if you can fake that you’ve got it made. Magic is the same, let them see you think, forget, remember, decide, panic, laugh, and feel bad, but control it so they only see what they should the fake motivations, not your real motivation of deceiving them. Realizing that you watch entertainers on more than one level is the first step. Then try finding your own “fake sincerity” in your own magic and character.

If focus of attention is the power of the wand, it should apply to the magician as well as the spectator. The magician should take the tool of the wand into his own practice, and focus on that which is worthwhile. Through focusing develop enough discipline to learn and master the first three rules of magic, practice, practice, practice. Rehearsal is even more important when you work on the subtlety’s of your character and your magic. Use the focus of the wand with all of your other tools, to clearly realize goals and accomplish objectives. The wand works well with the sword, reminding us to focus our thoughts before forming words and focus our words to accomplish our goals. The wand works well with the coin reminding us to focus our resources and to focus on our health. The wand works well with the cup reminding us to focus on the possibility of all that is unknown or focus on all known methods, refining the best recipe of effects and methods for a particular performance and venue. The wand is organizing and focusing on your creative talents, and passions. Detailed reflection, seeing things all the way around, from every perspective.

 
In my dream the staff or long stick was one of the first and most essential tools of an early mankind. The ancient man starring in my dream used a long stick to clear brush and obstructions from the walking path and also as a weapon to kill or distance himself from impending dangers. He would use the stick to steady himself when his footing was uncertain, and use it as a lever when he could not budge a heavy object. If the object has to be moved a distance many staves could be laid out like rollers and the object pushed along them. During the day sticks driven into the earth would give man his first sense of time passing, as he studied the shadows movement. At night he used various sticks and brush for a fire which he used for cooking, light and heat. He could also transfer fire from on place to another with a staff. This mastery of fire leads to signaling each other over long distances. The staff section of the dream ends with a large bonfire reversing back to a single spark. Then the wood which was burning, goes back to a giant tree, then the tree reverses back to a seedling and then to just a seed. I realized the staff was an important tool, but as the source of fuel for fire, it was a necessary key to the survival of man. Every fire regardless of size started with a single spark. Every huge useful tree began a tiny seed. Then I rendered the archetypal tool the staff as a stick with leaves still green on one end and seeds flying from that end while the other end, aged and flaming emits sparks. This staff I will call “The Rod”, which I will use as a symbol for the idea that no fire starts without that first spark, no tree without that tiny seed, creativity, passion, and focus are all positive traits of “The Rod”.
In my opinion nothing can replace the enthusiasm you have for your magic. Your passion for practice, will make you totally confident in your performance. Your desire to be better will drive you to find the finest effects and perform them flawlessly. Make researching and thinking on magic a priority. Remember you are what your thoughts are, if you think like a magician you are a magician. The more you “focus” on a subject, working ideas around in your mind the more ideas you will get on that subject, you will find yourself becoming more creative in that field.

 

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