We all remember the shows The Magicians Secret or Criss Angel Mindfreak and how they always seemed to make the most basic of tricks seem so real. These are masters of their art who have spent years practicing these tricks, so anyone who sees them might think that the tricks being performed are real. The truth is that deception and distraction play a considerable part in these tricks. You’d be surprised to know how many of these tricks are played out. Who knows? You might even be able to pull off some of them. Read ahead to find out how some of your favorite magic tricks are performed.
The Levitating Man
You might have come across some random priest floating in the air in a seated position out in the open. These people usually do this to show the power of their meditation and spiritual beliefs, but in truth, it is nothing more than a trick hidden in plain sight.
These types of magicians wear long robes to hide the basket they are sitting on, with the poles they hold being part of the setup. They hide these by blending them in with the surrounding so that no one can see them.
The Floating Woman
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and it is usually performed by magicians everywhere, usually on a public stage with many viewers. The magician will have an assistant on standby or pick someone from the crowd.
The secret to this trick is a hidden pole that is usually invisible to the eye, which holds up the table. Distraction also plays a key role in the form of a ring that goes over the table and keeps eyes away from the pole supporting the table.
Walking On The Water
Walking on water seems to be the ultimate way to make someone do a double-take. You might be surprised to find out that characters from Naruto, or even Jesus, aren’t the only ones who can walk on water.
Just like every other magic trick, this one also includes a bit of preparation beforehand because who can say they can walk on water? Perspex boxes are placed beneath the water so that the magician can walk. However, they might be a bit unstable to put your foot on.
Rabbit in the Hat
Pulling a rabbit out of a hat is one of the iconic magic tricks ever performed, and it has become a staple of magicians worldwide. It’s not possible to make a rabbit magically appear, as you will learn below.
This is a technique that requires you to have fast reflexes because you need to place the rabbit into the hat before anyone sees it. The rabbit will be carried in a transparent bag, so no one sees it.
Sawing Someone In Half
This is a magic trick that is sure to have the crowd worried for the magician’s assistant, as they are cut in half. The trick here is not to cut someone in half or else that might be considered murder.
You might see that there is a large box on the table in which the assistant lays down, but there are two boxes in reality. Another assistant lays down on the inside in a cramped position, and you have two halves of a body.
Cutting Someone But With A Buzzsaw
This is another variant of the sawing trick, but this might be the most dangerous one on the list, as the saw used here is real. Someone lays down on the table, and the saw cuts them in half with a surprising lack of blood.
The secret here is the hidden compartment on the table through which the assistant can pass his legs through so they don’t get cut. The legs that are being brutalized by the saw are instead a pair of fake legs.
Biting A Coin In Half
We don’t suggest taking a bite out of a coin even if you’re hungry and can’t find any food. You might lose a few teeth because an actual coin is made of hard metal, and your teeth might break, causing you a lot of pain.
This is nothing more than the average bait and switch technique found in most other magic tricks. The magicians will bait in viewers with a real coin and then switch it with a fake one that breaks easily when you bite a chunk out of it.
The Zig Zag Box
This trick, while still not being real, is hard to pull off as it requires a partner who has a great level of flexibility. The magician will place their assistant in a large box separated into a few parts.
The magician will then move the box slightly to make it appear as if the assistant’s body has been detached, but inside, the assistant is still fine. This is because the assistant uses a high level of flexibility to move along with the boxes. It seems uncomfortable no matter how flexible you are.
The Bending Spoon
When you look at most of the magic tricks on this list, what you realize is that most of them are all bait and switch techniques; the bending spoon is no exception. This is a popular trick, and it includes using a fake spoon that can be bent.
This is hidden in the sleeve of the shirt, and when showing off, the magician slides it out and bends the handle. After the crowd starts wowing at the trick, the magician sneakily inserts the fake spoon in his sleeve again.
The Floating Cup
This is a trick that requires no telepathic powers or Jedi abilities; even the least experienced tricksters can learn how to do this. While it might appear as if you are making the cup float, there’s an easy trick to pulling this off.
It all depends on how you are standing in front of a person – they don’t see behind the cup. Punch a small hole through the cup and place your thumb through it and then let go of the cup to make it appear as if it’s floating in mid-air.
Smoke From Fingers
What if a magician just pulls out their hands in front of you, and they start to make smoke come out of their fingers? That would look cool. Anyone would just think that they are causing so much friction in their fingers that there is smoke coming out.
However, this is not the case. This trick can be a bit dangerous as it requires you to use the leftover phosphorus from a burnt match. You need to apply that to your fingers. Apply the same amount of friction needed to light up a match, and you can easily make smoke appear from your fingers.
Pigeon Appearing
This has to be one of the most classic and iconic magic tricks of all time. The Pigeon Appearing magic trick has been displayed in the oldest magic shows. All the magician does in this trick is that they make a pigeon appear out of nowhere. There are a few ways this trick can be done.
The most general way is to use a bright flash of light for a very brief moment so that the audience cannot tell what’s happening. This is the key and main distraction necessary for the trick. The pigeon is stuffed into the sleeve of the magician’s coat, and they just quickly pull it out.
Walking Through a Solid Wall
This trick just seems impossible because, let’s be honest, it is just not possible for someone to walk through a wall that is completely solid. Well, a few magicians who are capable of doing this would disagree with you.
But in all fairness, even those magicians are not able to walk through the walls. We are humans, after all. This trick uses a sheet that is put up. This sheet helps with the misdirection. The truth behind this trick is that there is a tunnel underneath that the magician can just pass through to complete the trick.
Hand Through Glass
We already moved through solid walls; this should make glass a somewhat easier competition in comparison. Of course, even this is impossible to do without you breaking the glass if you wanted to do it for real. So, how are magicians able to do this?
In order for this trick to be successful, the magician uses several panels, and right before the trick, a few panels are switched out. This allows the magician to go through with their hands without any obstacles. No one notices any differences as long as the glass is clear enough.
The Card Through the Window
We moved through solid walls put our hands through a glass; now it is time to put objects through glass panels. This trick is quite impressive, and one of the most essential things required in this trick is assistance. Yeah, you got that right. You need help from an assistant in order for this trick to work.
The way this works is by putting a card that is identical on the other side of the glass after the magician places their card on the glass. All the magician requires after that is just to have someone pull off the other card from the window.
Turning Water Into Ice
Not everyone is likely to be familiar with this trick, but this trick involves a magician taking a cup full of water and pouring it out in another cup. This might sound dull till you see the magician pour out the other cup, and instead of water, you see ice coming out.
The way this works is that the magician already snuck in ice and a sponge into the cup, so the sponge absorbs all the water in the cup, and all we see are the cubes of ice being poured out.
The Smooth Criminal Lean
While this trick is not technically magic or related to magicians per se, it is still related to a famous celebrity. We are talking about the iconic dance move from one of Michael Jackson’s live performances and one of his most famous dance moves of all time. So, how is he able to do this kind of lean?
In order to perform this move, the soles of Michael Jackson’s shoes had triangular shapes that were cut into them. All he had to do was keep a perfect and smooth flow and have his heels caught in the nails sticking out of the floorboards.
The Underwater Box
This magic trick can easily be classified as not only one of the most dangerous but also one of the most challenging magic tricks that you can perform. To perform this, the magician needs to escape from a padlocked crate that is full of water while being chained or handcuffed.
Of course, the chains or the handcuffs aren’t genuine. The magician can easily just slip out of these bindings since they are fake. To offer more protection for the magician, the box has a panel on itself that the magician is able to use if things somehow get troublesome.
Underwater Torture Cell
This is another underwater magic trick. Needless to say, this one is a bit more dangerous than the one we saw before and has an additional layer to it. It requires the magician to be submerged into the water upside down while their feet are locked with the help of stocks.
The restraints are all locked, and the magician’s assistant, while locking the box, removes the hinge from the top of the box. This allows the magician to just push the lid up with their feet and escape. They also slip in the keys to unlock the restraints as a safety measure.
The Disappearance of the Statue of Liberty
David Copperfield is a known name when it comes to the world of magicians and magic tricks. He has performed many outrageous magic tricks and is often referred to as the most successful magician of all time.
Millions of people bore witness to the moment when David Copperfield brought down the curtain, and the Statue of Liberty was not on its stand. It was just missing from Liberty Island. The real magic behind this is the use of some carefully placed spotlights. These spotlights were used to trick the naked eye into thinking that nothing was there – it was just an optical illusion.
Metamorphosis
This is a spectacular-looking trick in which the performer enters a transparent and perhaps even mentally taxing item while an accomplice lifts a drape. The magician and his helper shift positions by the time the curtains drop. Some performers have mastered this technique to the point that they can do it in less than 2 seconds.
In other routines, the magician would be first trapped within the container and then emerge standing above it. The technique is generally fairly easy to figure out. There seems to be only one way out of whatever the sorcerer is once inside of.
The Celebrity Name Pick
This magic usually includes a spectator reciting many names of celebs and stars, scribbling them down, and putting them in envelopes or in a hat. It is a typical technique at gatherings and with much less spectacular magicians. After that, the artist seems to have a helper select a name from a hat and predict who that is.
They will, without a doubt, be accurate. They circumvent this by writing the same celeb’s names on every sheet of paper there. That way, regardless of whose piece the member of the audience selects, it will be the exact individual.
Sword Swallowing
Many folks are perplexed about how any of this is even possible. Even swallowing an aberrant blade may cause a person’s esophagus to be destroyed. But how does the wizard’s gag reflex remain unaffected by the sword? It appears that swallowing a dulled knife is not a deception but rather the result of years of hard work and dedication.
Of course, one bad maneuver while mastering this talent, and then they’ll be kicking themselves forever. The majority of catastrophic sword swallowing accidents and fatalities come as a result of injuries or while using something other than a typical sword swallow.
Being Impaled By A Spike
This is another risky ruse, despite the fact that it is only a ruse. The performer starts falling and looks to be skewered, trying to stand up upon those spikes and declaring that the technique is extremely risky, which it is! They are, nevertheless, perfectly okay.
The illusionist is bracing themself with a lumbar bracing and corset that is hidden by clothes, as well as gripping the spot in which the spikes look to have punctured the magician’s torso. The point of the blade connects with the back of the corset when the assistant is positioned onto it.
Swallowing Razors
This is yet another risky stuff that can result in serious oral cuts and bruises. While the blades may be “tried to swallow” one at a time, Harry Houdini accomplished so by drinking an entire glass of razors together at once. Then he yanked them everything out of his throat, tying them together with a rope.
Houdini had spat out the blades straight into the glass, and the blades he drew out of his mouth came from a package he had hidden in his cheeks. The magician dulls their equipment before doing this performance to prevent placing sharp knives in their throat.
From $1 To $100
This is one magic trick we wish we could do because turning a $1 note into a $100 note is something that would make our lives much easier. Sadly, tricks are only a sleight of hand, and this trick can’t give you more money.
The trick here is to tape two notes together, a $1 and $100 note, back to back. Show the $1 note and then fold the money, then quickly open it up and flip it to show the audience the $100 on the other side.
Fix A Ripped Card
This is a simple trick anyone can do. Once you pick up on how to do this, you could use it to impress a few people. This technique requires a bit of deception and preparation beforehand.
You will need two cards to complete this trick, and you will need to hide one of the cards. Have someone from the audience come up and write their name on the card, then switch it with the other card, and tear it. Show them the card with the signature, there you go – you’ve learned how to dupe the crowd.
Note From A Lemon Trick
If you followed Britain’s Got Talent in 2015, you were probably amazed by Jamie Ravens. One of the judges was requested to sign a document by Ravens. He immediately folded the paper, and, seemingly out from nowhere, a lemon appeared. The judge’s written paper was nestled within the lemon as he split it apart.
After showing the letter that was put within the lemon, Ravens swiftly closes it up. This is most probably since the Ravens didn’t really want the crowd to detect a puncture in the lemon. Jamie had done such a wonderful job diverting everybody that nobody ever spotted him put the message through the lemon’s slit.
Strait Jacket Escape
Escape from a straitjacket is a famous magic trick in which the crowd watches the magician put on the jacket and witness it being tightly fastened on, yet the magician is liberated in a matter of minutes. If performers want to go up a level, they may execute the jacket act underwater or even in a closed cabinet.
Planning and, obviously, training is the key to this feat. The performer must tense their muscles and breathe deeply while fastening the straight jacket. This expands the torso and, once freed, offers them extra slack to operate inside the straight jacket.
Fish in A Bottle Trick
The spectator is presented with a closed water bottle in this trick. It may be inspected and shaken to ensure that it has nothing but water. The performer then grabs a rag and whispers, and a goldfish appears inside the container. So, how did the goldfish get inside the bottle in the first place?
It had been there all along but was obscured by the bottle top. The fish is supported by a tiny, see-through piece of plastic put beneath the cap and protruding by a little tab. So, when the performer removes the tab out of an unopened bottle after covering it with the fabric, the goldfish drops into it.