What Happened at the Meeting on Friday 21st July 2017

Joel Howlett gave a Magic Lecture to the magicians.   It is a long time since the club has hosted a magic lecture.  Beforehand, Joel had said “The lecture will include a variety of material including close up, stand up and even routines that can be used for kids - I am aiming to cater to a wide variety of the members interests...........”

He started by coming on stage with a rose in his hand, then plucking off a petal, he threw this in the air and it changed in the air into a red silk handkerchief..

From this red silk handkerchief, he made a large coin appear suddenly. The coin was at least 4 cm across.  The coin then multiplied until he was holding three of them. We asked ourselves, “How did he produce such large coins ?”

Joel showed us three Australian coins, and emptied them into a wine glass.  When he  very openly tipped the wine glass into a spectator’s hand, the coins had changed into one large Chinese coin.  All this was set in the context of a story about a Chinese magician.

Next Joel did an effect called “Confabulation”, in which he asked a member of the audience where they would like to go on a holiday, another member how much they would spend and another who they would travel with.

Later he tore open a sealed envelope to reveal the exact information provided by the audience members correctly written down – giving us the impression that he had telepathically received our brain waves.

In  his lecture Joel also gave pointers about stagecraft, and tips on presentation, encouraging us to develop our magical skills.

Joel did a card trick.  He displayed about ten cards fanned face up and asked a spectator to choose one.  This card he placed face up on the deck, and then expressed surprise that the card chosen was the only red-backed one in the group – and he showed us this was true.  The other nine cards were all blue backed.  Your reporter’s mouth fell open in surprise at this revelation !

Taking four sponge balls of an intriguing brown-purple colour, Joel pushed each into his fist and out of his fist he pulled a silk streamer saying “Impossible”.  The sponge balls had vanished.

These are only some of the powerful items that were featured in this excellent lecture, and every item was explained in detail, with lecture notes. We cannot put the detailed explanations here.  You needed to be there !!

What Happened at the Meeting on Friday June 23rd

Your reporter found it quite difficult to keep track of the tricks that were being performed at this meeting, because they were short items, and lots of them !  As this chain of miracles went past in a bit of a blur,  it was only possible to get down the titles of each….

The host was Al Hirschel, and the theme was “Card Tricks with a Borrowed Deck”.  He led off with the Seven Card Trick, then a Four Jacks Assembly, and lastly a Card Layout to find the chosen card. 

David Whitson did a card trick using an ESP deck.  Next he had a card chosen, then found it on a Chinese sign.

Card magician Michael Blakeman started with an item finding a chosen card, then switched a chosen card on a spectator, then did a trick called the Drunken Shuffle,  then did a trick that resembled Vernon’s “Triumph”.  Michael did a mind reading item in which he looked for the chosen card by looking into the spectator’s eyes for a “tell” when he turned over the chosen card in the series of cards.  In his last item, he found the chosen card by peeling off top and bottom cards of the pack.

The next card magician, Brad Burgoyne, also found a chosen card, then he performed an item similar to the “Drunken Shuffle”.    A hopeless mess-up of cards is transformed into order by one cut by the magician - but in the neat spread of face-up cards one is still face-down - the chosen card.

 John Ferguson performed “Handful of Aces”, and “Spectator chooses the Aces”.

The “Piano Trick” is a nice bit of mathematical magic applied to a card trick, and this was neatly done by Denis Norman.   A card  originally between the spectator's fingers magically and invisibly moves from an "Even" pile to an "Odd" pile.

A visiting magician, Craig Hardwick, had a card chosen, then “thirds” were stacked up and the “rejects” put into a spectator’s fist.  When the fist was hit, cards fell out and the chosen card only remained   -  Startling !