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The latest season of Charmed is now showing on Star World. Taking a page from the highly successful Desperate Housewives, the second episode’s storyline was narrated in the background by Phoebe. Kinda like a cross between Desperate Housewives and Carrie Bradshaw. The charmed sister their deaths in the last season so I didn’t really expect they’d still come up with a new season.

Ok, Charmed isn’t the best series around. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer is far superior in terms of believability and plots. So why do we even bother watching Charmed? It may be just because of tradition (because it was a novel series when it first aired) and my affinity to magic.

When I was I think in grade 5, my father took me to watch David Copperfield at the CCP. Needless to say, I was amazed and I was inspired to believe magic is real. When I started getting regular allowance when I reached grade 6, I went on to collecting simple magic tricks that you may have seen being sold in the malls. I was doing the classic cups and balls routines, the gimmicked cards etc. and it was real fun.

Not much has been added on my magic collection back in High School and College until David Blaine came about. Virtually unknown in the magic industry, Blaine pushed the limits of “close-up” magic when he took his conjuring to the streets. Thus, born another genre of magic – Street Magic. To date, there are a few popular genres in the industry of magic: Stage magic or illusions (usually the big ones performed by the Pen Dragons, Houdini, Jeff McBride and Copperfield), close-up magic (magic using a table for presentation as popularized by Ed Marlo, Daryl, Dai Vernon), bizaarist magic (the freaky kind, sometimes includes hypnotism, séances etc. as popularized by Criss Angel) and street magic (having that close-up and impromptu effect as popularized by Erik Mana, Brad Christian and of course Blaine).

As with any hobby, magic is an expensive one. That’s why I couldn’t get past the kid-stuff tricks when I was in school but when I started earning my own dough, my resources to learning magic was virtually limitless. Thanks to Blaine, there were now real-world applications to the sleights I learned when I was young – the hindu shuffle, the overhand shuffle, the double lifts, the triple cuts, the breaks, the biddle grips, the colour changes and transpositions.

I could now make cards appear stuck on windows – and on the other side even, I could warp cards, I could make anybody separate the red and black cards while the cards are faced down, I could change cards while they are held onto by any spectator and I could cheat my way through card games. Oh, we learned to levitate too!

Founder of the Ellusionist shop and magic community Brad Christian had his epiphany when he performed a simple trick for a kid at a supermarket. The little girl was amazed and Brad realized that every father in the world should be able to amaze their kids the way he did. He called up friend and colleague, David Blaine and asked for rights to publish his effects to people. Thus born Ellusionist – wherein membership is one of the most sought after in the street magic industry.

Magic, for me, is real. Whether it’s an illusion or close-up conjuring or even Wiccan, the effect it brings to people is real. It symbolizes belief in the impossible, encourages dreams and gives inspiration. Wouldn’t you want your children to believe in magic, in faeries, in Peter Pan and maybe even Middle Earth? I’m pretty sure we all did when we were growing up.

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