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The Secret Gate
by Dartagnan

$20.20

(1 review, 1 customer rating) ★★★★★

PDF | by download [5.13 MByte]  
The Secret Gate by Dartagnan

The oldest, most pernicious, and insoluble problem in the history of magic was stated best by Henning Nelms, in his 1969 Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers ...

"No matter how astonishing a trick may be, it suffers from one major fault - it has no point."

This ebook is the long-sought-after answer to that statement.

[Please note that access to appendix 11 and 12 requires registration at the author's website.]

  • Acknowledgements
  • Foreword by Eric Evans
  • Preface
  • A Long Time Ago
  • A Lot of Simple Tricks and Nonsense
  • Best Star Pilot in the Galaxy
  • Scum and Villainy
  • Hokey Religions and Ancient Weapons
  • What Are You Trying To Push on Us
  • Tremor in the Force
  • A New Hope
  • These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For
  • Help Me, Obi-Wan
  • I'm Here to Rescue You
  • The Tractor Beam
  • Stretch Out With Your Feelings
  • May the Force Be With You, Always
  • Epilogue
  • Appendix 1
  • Appendix 2
  • Appendix 3
  • Appendix 4
  • Appendix 5
  • Appendix 6: The Last Jedi: A Theory
  • Appendix 7
  • Appendix 8
  • Appendix 9
  • Appendix 10
  • Appendix 11 (access to it requires registration on the author's page)
  • Appendix 12 (access to it requires registration on the author's page)
  • Appendix 13
  • About the Author
1st edition 2020, PDF 203 pages.
word count: 19680 which is equivalent to 78 standard pages of text


Reviewed by Joe Mckay (confirmed purchase)
★★★★★   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.

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