The Secret Gate
Overall customer rating: ★★★★★reviewed by Joe Mckay (confirmed purchase)
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Saturday 02 July, 2022)
This is a brilliant book.
I haven't been this excited by a magic book since I discovered the work of Andy (The Jerx). The book comes packed with superb bonus podcasts that make spending time with Dartagnan a real joy. I spent all of yesterday working through the ebook and the bonus content. It was one of the highlights of my life in magic (25 years and counting).
Dartagnan has performed thousands of shows as a street magician. And this has allowed him to see (first hand) the brutal indifference that most people have towards magic. This book is a record of his obsession with trying to find a way to tackle this problem head-on.
Nobody is more fooled by magic than magicians. They mistake tricks for magic and overlook the importance of meaning. This isn't some boring magic theory book. Dartagnan has dug deep into some of the best ideas from the world of cinema to help the reader understand how transformative the addition of meaning can be to your magic. Dartagnan has fused some of the most powerful ideas from the world's greatest storytellers with a key observation made by Henning Nelms back in the 1960s.
There is a giant blindspot in magic that 99.9% of magicians are seemingly unaware of. Just reading this book will show you where most magicians are going wrong when it comes to performing magic. Or rather - tricks, since most magicians today are actually tricksters rather than magicians (read the book to understand the difference).
This isn't a book. It is a revolution. Jump on board now and be part of the future.