On Technique: Non-Doing

Many years ago, I became fascinated with Taoism. I don't quite remember how I stumbled upon it. I was deeply immersed in meditation (reading books by Bokar Rimpoché) and Chinese martial arts.

I think one day I found a small book in a bookstore, The Tao of Lao Tzu (translated by Thomas Cleary, which for me is the best version). I devoured it. Some of its chapters are simply wonderful.

Nothingness as creator, non-form as its basis, the non-action as the engine of action. Like the non-form of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee.

I am in motion yet not moving at all. I am like the moon above the waves, always rolling and swaying. It's not about "I am doing this," but rather an inner understanding that "this is happening through me" or "this is doing itself for me." Self-awareness is the greatest obstacle to the correct execution of any physical action.

Tao of Jeet Kune Do - Bruce Lee

Interestingly, there was a magician in Spain, Gabriel Moreno who was captivated by these same philosophies in his magical work. He took the ideas from "Zen in the Art of Archery" and applied them to magic. His ideas of letting the elements, the cards themselves, do the action, so we don't have to, are brilliant. Gabriel Moreno thus developed a whole theory on the practice of magic and non-action, in order to convey that absence of action to the spectator. I recommend reading the wonderful article about Gabriel published by Miguel Muñoz in Maese Coral 2.

More recently, Giancarlo Scalia set out to study magical techniques, or rather the needs of magical effects, from the perspective of non-doing, or almost non-doing, in his work on the Bluff "Much More Than Nothing". In it, he exports the philosophy of the bluff pass (or non-pass) to many more techniques and concepts. For example, understanding the tensions and forms of normal actions, to mask non-actions, like shuffling without shuffling.

In this case, it responds to a pragmatic philosophy, from necessity to action, bottom-up, rather than a top-down paradigm imposing action.

And that allows us to understand a bit more the power of non-doing itself. In a way, it's the closest thing to the philosophy of magic itself. It should appear that we're doing nothing, "the best technique is the one that doesn't exist," as Ascanio used to say. The less it exists, the better. In fact, this idea was what drove Gabriel Moreno in his magic, and it resonated especially well with the Zen he discovered later. Another approach, as I've mentioned, is Giancarlo's, who masks his non-actions with "virtual" actions. Simulating an action, like in a false shuffle, where we pretend to perform a real shuffle while moving cards up and down, controlling them, but reaching the extreme of not acting at all, not moving a single card, even though it appears we are. Brilliant.

Here, Gabi also comes in. I believe one of his greatest contributions—and I've always said Gabi is much more than fictional magic—is the distillation of magic effects. His ability to perceive the needs of effects and strip away everything unnecessary. Gabi quoted Saint-Exupery : "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." What a profound statement; it's crucial to keep it in mind when performing magic.

Magicians have a natural tendency to create more and more techniques. As Gabi himself said, the internal life—the technique—is overdeveloped compared to the external life in magic.

I believe this tendency arises because often the audience we perform for most often are other magicians. And wanting to fool other magicians, we rush to find new methods. As Darwin Ortiz says in "Strong Magic", if a magician doesn't catch 10% of an effect, they applaud us for having fooled them. We strive to achieve that 10% for magicians, neglecting the other 90%, and it turns out that—again, as Ortiz says—if a layperson catches 10% of an effect, they already believe they've caught us, and the magic is lost.

Another reason is the misunderstood way of adapting an effect to our personality. Sometimes it will be necessary to change a technique because it's more favorable to us, or to adapt it to our vision of the external life, but not always. It's not bad to have our own style; in fact, it's good, but we don't have to obsess over it. Sometimes we can adapt only the external life to make it our own. We also have the feeling of being a better magician if we use more techniques, always trying to put a new spin on things. I believe that's inevitable, and it's a path almost all of us take, but it's part of a "magical adolescence" that should eventually pass.

It's true that the more technical baggage we have, the more effects we can perform, the more routines we can build, and the better the technique, the less it will be noticed. But we'll feel the need to cram those techniques into effects even when they're not needed, creating a baroque internal life and also a lack of clarity in the external life.

On the other hand, the magicians I've mentioned who seek simplicity are in fact very technical people—Gabriel Moreno, with his legendary abilities, would be the pinnacle of technical skill—but as Ascanio used to say, "to conquer the princess of simplicity, one must first defeat the dragon of difficulty." Once we've reached a certain level of magical maturity, we can look back and remove everything superfluous, introducing only the necessary technique and what best resonates with the effect.

Ascanio also used to say that technique is only 10% of an effect, but it's an essential 10%. Like salt in a stew, it's small in comparison to the other ingredients, but it's a vital component.

The criticism of over-technique is based more on its abuse, on the saturation of moves, on not understanding magic as an effect/phenomenon seen by a spectator, but rather as a display or self-gratification stemming from the internal life.

There are some effects, like Bannon's Spin Doctor, where suddenly an extra card appears—which, to make matters worse, reveals the method—just to keep adding effects in a "more is better" mindset, which, in my view, destroys the fiction, the illusion, and the experience, all for a magician's desire to inflate their own ego. It's an effect with four Aces, but then you reveal you have an extra card, then they're colored backs...As Vernon, said, confusion isn't magic, and some believe that confusing with a thousand effects is magic.

Another reason I believe we add too many techniques is guilt, we reiterate, over-shuffle, over-display (Ascanio's Spreads, Elmsley Counts,...), when it's not needed. In an effect a friend taught me, there was a display with an Ascanio's Spread, and it didn't convince me; it didn't feel organic from the perspective of the external life. I removed it, and no one noticed, nor did the magicians who saw it question me—"a display here to corroborate... Nothing." If there are 10 black cards and I've shown them, why do I need to show them again if nothing in the external life has suggested they've stopped being black?

The purest magic, and here Ascanio comes in again, is the contrast between a clear initial situation and a clear final situation and the less that happens in between, the better (or the less it *seems* to happen, thanks to actions in transit).

Gabi's 'Incauto' effect, for me, is a paradigm of the search for simplicity (among many others, like the palindrome deck or the attention test).

He takes an effect with a multitude of duplicates, counts, palms, etc., and reduces it to its minimal expression. A multiple turnover, an Ascanio's Spread (which I actually remove too), and a simple lap. And it remains the same effect, but much cleaner, simpler, and all-terrain (borrowed deck, incomplete, impromptu).

As Joaquín Matas says at the end of A Fuego Lento Vol. 2, we need to learn to differentiate between classics and "magician-pleasers." They're not the same, and that happens because we don't listen to the audience. There are effects that blow us away as magicians because the technique or method surprises us, and we think it's going to be a bombshell, but it turns out the audience is much colder to it than to the incredibly simple and brilliant "Double Prediction" (the first effect in Fundamental Card Magic).

As Juan Tamariz comments in The Magic Rainbow, classics are, putting aside the allegories to primal desires, effects that are conceptually simple from the spectator's point of view. The broken and restored thread, the Linking Rings, The Miser's Dream,... Not changes, transformations, transpositions, productions without rhyme or reason.

We need to listen to the audience, simplify. What's important, as Wonder put it in other words (The Books of Wonder Vol. 1) is the external life. Visualize the effect exactly as it would be if you had genuine magical powers, and try not to stray from that vision. The further we stray, the worse the effect will be.

Similarly, if it's an effect we already know, we should seek its essence and distill it until nothing is superfluous and nothing is lacking, as Saint-Exupery said. It should have the least possible noise, the greatest clarity, and the greatest economy. Although these are sometimes antagonistic concepts, I believe there's a point where both can be enhanced equally. We need to reach the point where improving one compromises the other. If both can be improved, it's our duty to do so, because otherwise, it's not a good effect.

Bibliography

Meditation: Advice for Beginners. Bokar Rimpoche. Dharma Publishing

The Magic of Ascanio Vol I. Jesús Echeverri. Páginas Publishing

The Books of Wonder. Tommy Wonder & Stephen Minch. Páginas Publishing.

Maese Coral Vol. 2.

Strong Magic. Darwin Ortiz. Páginas Publishing.

A Fuego Lento. Vol 2. Joaquín Matas. Mystica Publishing

The Magic Rainbow. Juan Tamariz. Frakson Publishing.

Tao Te Ching. Trans. Thomas Cleary. Edaf Publishing

The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Bruce Lee. Eyras Publishing