 SURREALCHEMY IS A TERM THAT WAS COINED BY TONY ‘DOC’ SHEILS IN HIS 1989 PUBLICATION ‘THE CANTRIP CODEX’ AND IT IS A WORD THAT HAS STUCK WITH ME SINCE I FIRST READ IT. Doc Shiels has over the years been heralded as the father of Bizarre magick by such well-known names in the field as Tony Andruzzi (Masklyn ye Mage) and whether you are into bizarre magic or not I suggest you read some of the Doc’s work and see what Sheils had to say about the state of magic and mentalism nearly forty years ago, he was a talented wordsmith and his books are some of my favourites. I have been performing magic since I was eight years old and those of you who know me will be aware I have performed stage magic, close-up magic, escapology and for the past fifteen years or so have made my living from mentalism and demonstrations of psychic phenomena. Many years ago I started to dabble with Bizarre magic but to be honest as someone who grew up watching the Hammer House of Horror Friday night shockers; I found many of the ideas presented by bizarre magicians a bit hammy. Daggers, blood, chalices, skulls, hooded cloaks and strange incantations simply left me with a smile on my face. Interestingly enough some years after I gave up on bizarre presentations, T.A. Waters in his massive book ‘Mind Myth & Magic’ echoed my thoughts when he suggest that a bizarre magick effect staged in a quite normal everyday environment (like a laundrette), would dispel the clichéd notion of magick as one where skeletons and haunted houses abound, and the strength of the actual magick presentation would therefore be much more profound and unsettling. AND I COULDN’T AGREE MORE, IT IS THIS NOTION THAT TRANSFORMS THE BIZARRE INTO THE SURREAL. Recently I became somewhat bored with the mentalism routines I have been making a living with for the past fifteen years, even though I designed them all myself. I think the main reason is because I have seen so many new mentalists hit the market all basing their presentations on the same themes, NLP, body language, subliminal control etc, and so after re-reading all of Tony ‘Doc’ Sheils work I decided to shake up my presentations by adding a touch of surrealism, I mean think about it: “ALL MAGIC BY ITS VERY NATURE IS SURREAL”. I posted this comment on Twitter a while back and it was re-tweeted more than anything I have ever posted before, which to be honest surprised me, because most of my followers (on that account at least) are magicians and there seems to be a huge amount of boring repetitive magic and mentaism on the market these days being pumped out as the latest and greatest miracle of our time. IT IS TIME THAT MAGICIANS AND MENTALISTS STARTED TO EMBRACE THE SURREAL AND DROP THE TRIED AND TESTED THAT EVERYBODY SEEMS TO BE DOING. And finally if you don’t feel it is possible to bring a touch of surreal into the main stays of magic then you need to watch Yann Frisch as he takes the classic cups and balls/chop cup and turns it on its head. True surrealism and classical magic combined to create something totally unique. Yann Frisch (Chop Cup) Till next time. Comments are closed.
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