(see if you can say that fast a couple of times)
1. You receive a grandiose slap on the back of congrats if you know what that is. Sorry, no prizes. Just a big smile from yours truly.
2. Prestidigitation is a set of techniques used by a magician or card shark to manipulate objects in his hands such as coins and playing cards, pretty little silk scarves and small, wacky colored, little squishy nerf balls.
3. Prestidigitation is also known as “Sleight of hand”, mistakenly referred to as “slight of hand”. But that’s wrong. So don’t use it, especially if you are ghost writing to Houdini.
4. The word “sleight” comes from the Old Norse language and means dexterity and deceptiveness.
5. Prestidigitation is also called “léger de main” which is French for “lightness of hand” and sounds really nice if you can pronounce it properly.
6. This is more complicated that you could ever imagine – and not just the act of doing the trick. There are hundreds of different sleights, but they are generally classified into groups: switches; changes; the pass; the false deal; the double lift; the false shuffle to name a few.
7. David Copperfield pulled this off, but don’t you try: When a mugger approached him for his wallet (and what the mugger presumed was a more than likely hefty bounty), ol’ Dave sleighted him by making the mugger think he had no wallet. Not quite on a scale as making an airplane disappear, but noteworthy none-the-less.
8. Not only do you need to develop nimble fingers and hands to manage prestidigitation, but one must use psychology, misdirection and an organized choregraphy of moves to produce the end result. This, my friends, takes mountains of time, effort and practice, which is probably why “sleight” of hand doesn’t functionally interest me in the least.
9. There are 2 types of misdirection: Time and Movement. By allowing time to pass during a sleight, the viewer’s perception may be altered. So while you are telling an audience about your Aunt Bessie’s golf ball sized tumor, you can move those coins/cards/scarves around most anywhere as your viewers take a long snooze or run to the restroom.
10. Movement is more complicated. Magicians use this theorem: “A larger action covers a smaller action” to misdirect the viewers attention. In other words, while you are actually putting the pretty silk scarf in your pocket with one hand, your other hand is perhaps recreating Whistler’s Mother in Paint By Number.
11. Some famous prestidigitators besides David Copperfield are: Criss Angel, David Blane, Paul Brashier, Dean Dill. Some of them have websites, but I guarantee you, they don’t give away their secrets.
12. While you may be amused at your fave magician at the local pizza place hiding quarters behind your ears, sleight of hand has, yes, been used for “dark” purposes. Con artists are frequently amazing prestidigitators – using their gift to cheat at gambling. Remember Moe Howard putting cards between his toes in that “3 Stooges” short? Huh?
13. Those who read Henry Hay’s Cyclopedia of Magic will tell you that there are vast differences between “tricks” and “magic”. Tricks (sleights) can be done by “apparatus conjurers” but magic is an art perfected and performed by “illusionists”. And please remember from me: ALL pursuits have their very sensitive, fully engaged affectionados, whose toes should never be stepped on, but gazed at with appreciation, preferably from a safe distance.
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