“Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”
Albus Dumbledore
Magic is all wrong lovely readers, but do not worry much for through this rather extensive essay I will try to illustrate the verisimilitude of such shockingly pretentious opening line.
There seems to be a common axiom
that both magicians and laymen use. It came to me an epiphany the other day and
I realized that such dogmatic attitude may very well be the root of all our
problems.
"It is easy once you know the
secret"
The past phrase probably ranks up
there with "the hand is quicker than the eye" in that imaginary list
of common beliefs of magic that have been traditionally trivializing and
working towards the ultimate annihilation of the craft since the begging of gods and men. Well, that and the medieval church burning
conjurers alive, but that's a story for another day
Anyways, back to my epiphany:
"It is easy once you know the
secret" should read "It
is easy until you know the secret"
The present change of paradigm I am
proposing will divide the topic of the essay in two, one section will deal with
how I think this affects magicians and the other one will concern itself with
the effects it has on muggles
If we magicians live by such an
absurd motto it will most definitely reflect on the way we present ourselves
and our magic. Thinking that things are easy once one knows the secret exposes
a lack of dedication and respect for the secrecy of our craft in present days
displayed by the abundance of YouTube tutorials or performances of 11 year olds
that excuse their poor subterfuges hiding themselves under the holy cloth of
misdirection, when in reality they do not understand one bit about neither of
those things
To my mind, the only way of solving
this is by understanding that technique is the single most important aspect of
magic. Without technique, there is no external reality. Therefore, if we
dedicate ourselves to perfecting the inner workings of our miracles, we may
work towards changing that awful miss-conception,
On the other hand, the way the
axiom in question affects laymen is by making them believe that magic is an
utterly trivial discipline and the worst thing may be that, surprisingly enough
they are right. The way laymen are usually exposed to magic is by watching TV,
which is not the ideal media for the presentation of the craft we all know and
love.
Let us all face it, we cannot go
back to the late 1800's and enjoy the golden era of magic yet but we can and we
should try and put a little more thought into every single performance we give
for the only way of spreading light into the darkness is by presenting better
magic and the only way of doing it is through attention to detail and
dedication to our endeavors.
In conclusion I'd like to thank you
if you have made it this far and I'd also like to add that the past series of
posts were meant to illustrate what I exposed in the present essay. It is our
job to make it look easy on the eyes while leaving the complex inner workings
to ourselves.
Until next time lovely readers,
Professor Moriarty checks out.
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."
Sherlock Holmes
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