In the Mystery School book, Eugene Burger published an essay On The Structure of Magic Effects. Fortunately it was reprinted in the first posthumous book written and published by Lawrence Hass. Unfortunately I believe both are only available on the secondary market.
It’s only a few pages long however there’s much to consider and contemplate. Eugene writes that we can take any magic effect and divide it into individual moments. This process is idiosyncratic as anyone might divide into different moments. You may have five while I might have eight.
Eugene next proposes that the basic structure of any magic effect is: fair/fair/fair/fair/wow. Quite simply, each moment leading up to the climax must look and seem fair. Each action I take must look fair. If there’s hesitation, a pause, or movement that looks or feels different or strange, the effect is lost.Eugene then gives us homework: look at each moment of our magic effect and ask ourselves, is it fair? If it’s not, then there’s work to be done. The work might be improving our methods or sleights, crafting a better gimmick, changing our blocking, or any number of changes. To us4 a phrase that Eugene often quoted, we must look at our work with “ruthless honesty”.
I don’t often say this but this is brilliant work. Like a majority of Eugene’s work, it’s simple but not easy to do.
