Ritual
Ritual
By Brad “Scarnecky” Gordon
One fine day I was exercising a personal ritual of mine which consisted of sitting peacefully, thinking and writing in my journal. I am a very peculiar person who really enjoys to have the television on while reading and writing. Normally I love to put in a movie of some kind (without commercials) so that I can somewhat listen to the movie. In fact I have listened to Forrest Gump at least 20 times, however I have never seen it, can you imagine?
On this particular day I found myself watching Karate Kid II. This, by the way, is another movie I had never seen, only heard. I happened to notice or pay attention, however, to a certain part of the movie where Daniel-San was pulled into a sticky situation. There were blocks of ice lined up in a row, and the other lads were trying to push a bet onto Daniel-san (Karate kid) that he couldn’t break the ice blocks. Mr. Miyagi took the bet and told Daniel he believed that he could in fact break the ice. This is the part that really struck a relative chord with me personally.
Before I continue, allow me to provide a few definitions of a Ritual.
Rit – u – al [rich – oo – uh l]
- An established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite.
- Observance of set forms in public worship.
- A book of rites or ceremonies.
- Any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.
- A prescribed code of behavior regulating social conduct, as that exemplified by the raising of one’s hat or the shaking of hands in greeting.
- Psychiatry a specific act, as hand-washing, performed repetitively to a pathological degree, occurring as a common symptom of obsessive-compulsive neurosis.
Daniel stood up to the blocks of ice which were aligned side by side with a small gap in between each. He placed his hands together and seemed to do some slight meditation. Slowly rubbing his hands together the ice was in full view. Daniel slowly ran through the motions with his hand sort of setting up his path of power. Inside of this moment of ritual my mind moved ahead of Daniel, and before he actually made his attempt to break the ice, I actually saw him in my own mind breaking the ice.
What an interesting thing I thought. It no longer mattered if he actually successfully broke the ice, for I saw him do it in my mind. What if he would have stopped and not gone through with it? For me it would not have mattered because of the powerful impact his little ritual had on me.
Imagine for a moment if he would have just stepped right up to the ice without the ritual and blasted his hand through it. This would, of course, have been successful, but it would have nowhere near the same impact upon me. This could be looked at as relative to drama and build up, however I personally feel it is something completely different and much more special.
By creating ritual before you really actually do something magical will not only enhance your performances it will also provide our spectators the opportunity to imagine what it is that you will be creating.
For example, imagine you are about to perform the floating dollar bill. It would not be necessary to state you are going to cause it to float. All that would be necessary would be to create a bit of ritual mixed with some assumption.
Floating Dollar bill mixed with Ritual example
First crumple the dollar bill, and place it on the table or working surface. By motioning with your hands above the bill as if you are concentrating on making it do something, your spectator’s mind will begin to fill in the blanks. She may see it float or she may see it move a little bit in her mind. Now pause after the perceived effort, and pick up the dollar bill. By holding it in the air with the left hand and waving your right hand below it and above it as if it is suspended (which it is not yet). This may cause your witnesses to see that the bill will be floating or that you are trying to make it float.
The third phase would be to place it on the table and motion with your hands in an upward manner trying to cause it to rise. It doesn’t – NOW here you have built up drama and anticipation and provided her the opportunity to imagine that the bill will or could possibly float and she has seen it without question in her mind.
Next phase would be to have her hold out her hand. Placing the bill in her hand, a bit more concentration and suddenly the bill rises a bit off her hand and then back again, ending the effect. So you can see how powerful the ritual will be.
On the other side of the coin, I feel that using ritual will afford us magicians the opportunity to not even perform a trick or to make a mistake and mess up a specific routine. With ritual added to the beginning of an effect. The actual magic doesn’t even need to happen. The ritualistic implication can be powerful enough in my humble opinion.
We begin to scratch the surface of suggestion, hypnosis and/or NLP. However in my opinion there really is no need to go that far. Most of our magic can be approached with a presupposing attitude. “This bill can float; I’ve seen it happen before; I don’t doubt it, and here is what it would look like;” . . . even if the bill never moves. Of course this is not our desired outcome – to fail. However this could be used to your advantage to really hook your spectators, and for those who have a little bit more of an overactive imagination, these kinds of things will really hit home.
Formulating little rituals will, in my opinion, create extra mystery, power, drama, excitement and interest in our magic . Please give it a try as it doesn’t even really matter what trick or effect you choose add ritual to, so feel free to begin.
With Great thanks,
Brad “Scarnecky” Gordon