Magic terms and phrases

The words magicians use, defined in plain English. The most important pair comes first in every magician's education: the effect is what the audience sees, and the method is how it is done. This glossary explains the first and keeps the second to itself.

Abracadabra: The best-known magic word. It first appears in a Roman medical poem of the early third century, as a charm against fever, long before it became a stage magician's word. More →
Act: A performer's complete set piece for a show, made of several routines in a fixed order.
Angles: The directions from which a trick can be watched without the method showing. A trick with bad angles only works for an audience standing in front.
Assistant: A performer who works on stage with the magician. In stage illusion the assistant is often doing the hardest work in the show.
Bizarre magick: A style that presents tricks as strange stories, often with old props, folklore and a darker mood. The "k" spelling is traditional in the genre.
Book test: A mentalism effect in which a spectator chooses a word or passage in a book and the performer appears to read their mind and name it. More →
Card magic: Magic with playing cards, the largest single branch of close-up magic. More →
Cardistry: The art of card flourishes: cuts, spins and fans done for their own beauty, with no trick involved.
Close-up magic: Magic performed a few feet from the audience, usually at a table, with small objects such as cards, coins and rings. More →
Close-up pad: A soft, cloth-topped mat that a close-up magician performs on. It marks out the working area on a table and gives cards and coins a quiet, even surface. Also called a close-up mat. More →
Conjuror: An older word for a magician who performs tricks, as opposed to someone claiming real powers. Still common in British English.
Cups and balls: One of the oldest tricks in magic: balls appear, vanish and travel between upturned cups, often ending with a larger surprise under each cup. Versions are described in Roman writing and it is still performed today. More →
Effect: What the audience sees happen: a card rises, a coin vanishes. Magicians separate the effect from the method, which is how it is done. More →
Escapology: The art of escaping from restraints such as handcuffs, ropes, straitjackets and locked boxes. Harry Houdini is its most famous name. More →
Exposure: Revealing the method of a trick to people who are not magicians. Most magicians regard it as the one unforgivable sin, because it spoils the trick for everyone who performs it.
Flourish: A display of skill for its own sake, such as fanning a deck or rolling a coin across the knuckles. It shows dexterity rather than creating magic.
Force: Controlling which card or object a spectator picks while they believe their choice is free. More →
Gaff: A specially made card, coin or prop that looks ordinary but is not. A gaffed deck is a deck that contains such cards. More →
Gimmick: A secret device that makes a trick possible and is never seen by the audience. In everyday English the word has drifted to mean any attention-grabbing trick. More →
Hocus pocus: An old conjuror's phrase, recorded in English from the early seventeenth century. An English book on conjuring published in 1634 was called Hocus Pocus Junior. Its origin is disputed.
Illusion: Among magicians, a large stage trick usually involving people or animals, such as sawing a woman in half. In everyday speech, any magic trick. More →
Illusionist: A magician who specialises in large stage illusions. Often used simply as a grander word for magician.
Layperson: Someone who is not a magician. Magicians talk about performing for laypeople, as opposed to performing for other magicians, who watch very differently.
Legerdemain: Sleight of hand. From French, roughly "light of hand". An old and rather grand word for the skill.
Levitation: Making a person or object appear to float. A classic of stage illusion since the nineteenth century, and of close-up magic with smaller objects.
The Magic Circle: A society of magicians founded in London in 1905, with David Devant as its first president. Its Latin motto, Indocilis Privata Loqui, is usually translated as "not apt to disclose secrets". More →
Magician's oath: A promise, in several traditional wordings, never to reveal a trick's method to a non-magician and never to perform a trick for anyone without having practised it first.
Manipulation: A style of stage magic made of pure sleight of hand with objects in plain view: cards fanned from nowhere, billiard balls multiplying, coins appearing at the fingertips.
Mentalism: Magic that appears to show mental powers: mind reading, prediction, influence. Performers are called mentalists. More →
Method: How a trick is actually done. The audience sees the effect; only the magician knows the method.
Misdirection: Guiding where an audience looks and what it thinks about, so it notices what the magician wants and misses what it should not. Often misunderstood as simply making people look away.
Parlour magic: Magic for a room-sized audience, between close-up and stage: a living room, a function room, a small hall. Also spelled parlor magic. More →
Patter: What a magician says while performing. Good patter is not filler: it gives the trick a reason to happen and holds attention.
Plant: A secret confederate in the audience, also called a stooge. Most magicians avoid them, and audiences suspect them far more often than they are used.
Prediction: An effect in which the performer shows, at the end, that they knew a choice or outcome in advance: a sealed envelope or written note revealed after a free choice. A staple of mentalism. More →
Prestidigitation: Sleight of hand, especially as performance. From French and Latin roots meaning quick fingers.
Prop: Any object used in a performance, from a deck of cards to a sword cabinet. More →
Reset: Putting a trick back into its starting state so it can be performed again. A trick with no reset can be done over and over without a break.
Routine: A sequence of effects built into one piece with a beginning, a middle and a finish, such as an ambitious card routine. More →
Séance: A sitting at which a spirit medium claims to contact the dead. Séances were hugely popular from the 1850s, and magicians including John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini campaigned against fraudulent mediums. More →
Self-working trick: A trick that needs no sleight of hand, so the performer can concentrate on presentation. More →
Sleight of hand: Secret manipulation of objects with the hands, done so smoothly that nobody notices. The core skill of close-up magic.
Spectator: A member of the audience, especially one who helps with a trick by choosing a card or holding a prop.
Stage magic: Magic designed for a theatre audience, using larger props, assistants and illusions. More →
Street magic: Close-up magic performed for strangers in public. Old as busking, but made a television genre by David Blaine's 1997 special. More →
Sucker trick: A trick that seems to let the audience in on the secret, then proves them wrong. Done well it is funny; done badly it is smug. More →
Svengali deck: A classic trick deck of cards that lets a beginner perform strong effects with almost no practice. More →
Transposition: An effect in which two objects appear to change places, such as a coin in one hand and a card in the other, or two people in two locked boxes.
Trick deck: Any deck of cards specially made for magic rather than for play, such as a Svengali, stripper or marked deck. Magicians usually call these gaffed decks. More →
Walk-around magic: Close-up magic performed while moving between groups at a party, wedding or corporate event, usually standing with no table.
Wand: The magician's traditional stick, usually black with white tips. Today it is more a symbol than a prop, though some magicians still use one.