Off to India next week for a month. On one of my earlier visits I watched an amazing magician on the streets. He did the best cups and balls routine I ever saw. He used a finely turned wand to push the cups over to reveal the balls and his misdirection was sooooo slick and professional. Ireckened this professional magician must have been about seven or eight years old. He had the lisp and the gap between his front teeth. Later I watched this urchin boy ply his trade of magic on others in a park. If he does this for eight hours a day . . . no wonder he's so good.
Magic is very popular in India and goes down a treat in the churches there too. I remember standing on a village wall doing a Rocky Raccoon routine and the whole village came to watch. Have magic wand will travel sounds like a nice motto to me!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
M Joan Willis Gospel Visual Aids for Pre-Schoolers
From time to time I get feedback on the Gospel e Magic Book and sometimes it is not always praise. This is good. I welcome input from those who are thoughtful and want to input ideas that will help others. The main criticism from M Joan is that my book had nothing for children of pre-school age. I must confess I have very little experience of communicating or teaching with this age group. I invited M Joan to make a contribution to the blog and here it is.
M Joan Willis writes the following:
With regards to some of the applications for your trick, the one that comes to mind is the one using the Professor's Nightmare (3 ropes of 3 different sizes). You call it the 3-rope gospel trick. What I do is talk about the love of God and how he loves us all the same and then make the ropes all even. This is quite effective.Think your book has excellent graphics and is extremely well-done. Congratulations.
One 'trick' I particularly like is using three ropes of different colours- about 12" in size each. One end of each rope is a different colour. i.e. green with yellow tip, red with green tip, yellow with red tip. You hold this three ropes in your hand so that for all intensive purposes you have three ropes of three colours. You get the children to form a circle. Talk about God's love. Does he love all the children the same. What about children from Africa? China? Native children, etc. Then you tie the ropes together - using the yellow tip to join with the yellow end, the green tip with the green end and the red tip with the red end. You now have 3 circles which look to the audience that you have a circle of green, red and yellow. You can get the children to choose which circle they want for the children say of other countries. When you have finished chatting with the children you suddenly toss the three circle up in the air and lo and behold you have one big circle (if you do it right!) and you tell them that God loves all the children of the world regardless of where they come from or what colour they are. - this is just a hasty description that I have originated from the set of ropes which are easily obtainable at the magic store, very reasonable and it's very effective.Another thing that I like to do - although not really magic - is to chat with the children and ask them if they have ever made a snowflake (I am sure you did when you were a kid). You show them a square of paper and then fold it to make your snow flake. I fold my paper in half and then in quarters and then once again to form a triangle. At the very centre of the triangel I cut a little hole. If you were to unfold the paper you would see 8 small holes near the very centre. On the fold which is a triangle, I draw an anchor and then cut round it. (I have this done before the presentation but don't show the drawing). When it's unfolded it becomes a lovely snowflake - but don't stop here. You cut out each section of the snowfalke and you have an anchor. On the anchor I print the word 'Jesus' on the stem and at the bottom "God" and give each child one to take home. Explaining that Jesus/God is the anchor for life. This is a very hurried description. Usually I chat about anchors - relating to ships. Actually I probably will use this story tomorrow because being summer we see more boats and often they get anchored for fishing.
Thank you for sharing this M Joan and I wish God's Blessing on your ministry to the children.
M Joan Willis writes the following:
With regards to some of the applications for your trick, the one that comes to mind is the one using the Professor's Nightmare (3 ropes of 3 different sizes). You call it the 3-rope gospel trick. What I do is talk about the love of God and how he loves us all the same and then make the ropes all even. This is quite effective.Think your book has excellent graphics and is extremely well-done. Congratulations.
One 'trick' I particularly like is using three ropes of different colours- about 12" in size each. One end of each rope is a different colour. i.e. green with yellow tip, red with green tip, yellow with red tip. You hold this three ropes in your hand so that for all intensive purposes you have three ropes of three colours. You get the children to form a circle. Talk about God's love. Does he love all the children the same. What about children from Africa? China? Native children, etc. Then you tie the ropes together - using the yellow tip to join with the yellow end, the green tip with the green end and the red tip with the red end. You now have 3 circles which look to the audience that you have a circle of green, red and yellow. You can get the children to choose which circle they want for the children say of other countries. When you have finished chatting with the children you suddenly toss the three circle up in the air and lo and behold you have one big circle (if you do it right!) and you tell them that God loves all the children of the world regardless of where they come from or what colour they are. - this is just a hasty description that I have originated from the set of ropes which are easily obtainable at the magic store, very reasonable and it's very effective.Another thing that I like to do - although not really magic - is to chat with the children and ask them if they have ever made a snowflake (I am sure you did when you were a kid). You show them a square of paper and then fold it to make your snow flake. I fold my paper in half and then in quarters and then once again to form a triangle. At the very centre of the triangel I cut a little hole. If you were to unfold the paper you would see 8 small holes near the very centre. On the fold which is a triangle, I draw an anchor and then cut round it. (I have this done before the presentation but don't show the drawing). When it's unfolded it becomes a lovely snowflake - but don't stop here. You cut out each section of the snowfalke and you have an anchor. On the anchor I print the word 'Jesus' on the stem and at the bottom "God" and give each child one to take home. Explaining that Jesus/God is the anchor for life. This is a very hurried description. Usually I chat about anchors - relating to ships. Actually I probably will use this story tomorrow because being summer we see more boats and often they get anchored for fishing.
Thank you for sharing this M Joan and I wish God's Blessing on your ministry to the children.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
tarbell's magic course and gospel magic
The absolute 'Bible' for magicians is the 8 volume set of the Tarbell Course. While it is dated (especially in the suggested patter), the truth is that there is nothing out there to compare with the comprehensive overview of virtually the entire field of magic and performing. It covers everything from the classics such as the Linking Rings or Egg Bag, through to Children's routines, through to tricks with cards, rope, coins and mentalism - not to mention large scale illusions.
It follows then that if many magicians have cut their teeth on learning the Tarbell course then a Gospel magic book using the same tricks is in order. This has in fact happened (and some time ago). So far the authors have produced a Volume one and two. Come on guys - not far to go now - only six more volumes.
The Spiritual Applications do not give you the secrets of the tricks (you need to have the original Tarbell books for that) - but they do creatively suggest messages which lend themselves to the tricks. Or is that the other way round - tricks that lend themselves to the message? Either way, these contributions to Gospel Magic should be on the shelf of anyone who is really into sharing their faith through illusion.
As the Fellowship of Christian Magicians would say - "Share the Faith! - Keep the Secret!"
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