The thing is YouTube is what got me started in magic as in some countries and I speak for those who are not so large in the magic industry, there are no magic books in libraries, if any, it's scarce whereas I can learn the double lift in a book, or a visual, better and updated one on YouTube and I speak on behalf of beginners magic .
Really all beginner's Even the ones who do not use youtube?
you will find, as aforementioned, some of the biggest names in magic are doing free tutorials on YouTube and you might confuse this issue with some random 12 year old uploading the instant download from penguin magic but you will be surprised at the legitimacy of these accounts.
As has been said before I collect old books and magazines and I do read them. Here is something from Mahatma May 1898, yes really 1898...
"DON'T GIVE IT AWAY."?By SARGENT, THE MERRY WIZARD.
"Omne ignotum pro magnifico"
I notice with regret a tendency among
magicians of a certain class, to select some
trick of minor importance and to expose the
secret to their audience. Now this is not
only extremely bad art, but in many ways
it militates directly against the performer
who indulges in such questionable methods.
In the first place, when the audience find
how easily they have been deceived, they
imagine that all tricks are of the same nature
and give the performer no credit for being
skillful.
Every magician should play his character
through to the end consistently. Now it is
just as inconsistent for the magician to expose
a trick that he has' carried through
successfully, as it would be for an actor at
the end of a realistic stage representation
of a storm, to step forward and throwing
aside the character he was playing, explain to the audience that the
sound of rain was produced by a handful of dried peas and a series
of wooden pegs; that the sound of wind was made by a piece of silk
and a revolving cylinder, the thunder by shaking a sheet of iron, etc.
This may all be useful information and strictly true, but the audience
this case, as in the case of the magician, have paid their good
money to be amused and having enjoyed the illusion, they prefer to
let it rest there, assuming, as they have a right to do, that this is
neither time or place for a discussion of ways and means.
My pupils often say to me that they have seen magicians win a
laugh or applause by this kind of work, but the man who has to resort
to that method to gain applause is in the wrong business.
Many excuses are offered by these men, the favorite one being
that others do the same thing. Granted, but are they the highest
type of magicians? Are they the successful ones, and if so, have
they succeeded on account of this kind of work, or in spite of it?
That is, have they so many good points that this weakness is forgivable
in them ? If such is the ease it seems to me that it were far
better to imitate what is best in their work, rather than to perpetuate
their weaknesses, if, indeed, it is necessary to imitate at all, which I
am by no means willing to allow.
