After my conversation with Francesco Rulli about Magic and Education, I thought
about his superhero factory project: the Examer Film Project. The following question came naturally:
What do Magicians and Superheroes have in common?
The answer is pretty simple: they have Super Powers!
Mandrake can hypnotise you instantly and so can Derren Brown.
Superman can fly and so can David Copperfield and Chris Angel.
Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men can read minds and so can Max Maven.
Magneto can bend metal with his mind and so can Banacheck and James Randi.
This is just to name a few. There are hundreds of magicians around the world who can demonstrate these
extraordinary powers.
But do magicians really have super powers? Well, no...but hold on, actually yes they do!
Magicians don't really fly like Superman or bend metal like Magneto. They do it 'slightly' differently.
But does it really matter how they do it? The reason they blow our minds away every time is because it really looks like they can fly or twist forks by just looking at them and we have no clue how they did it.
A Superpower is defined as a superhuman power. That is a power beyond ordinary or normal
human ability or experience.
Other definitions mention a power that defies explanation, a power that seems
to break the laws of physics, a power that most people do not have.
This is exactly the kind of power magicians have. To most *people it seems that for a moment magicians can break the laws of gravity, walk through walls, read brain waves, levitate, make objects vanish into thin air and reappear at an impossible location.
One of the reasons magicians get away with it is precisely because most people are not magicians and are ignorant of their magical methods.
But beyond the display of their super powers, magicians have the ability to suspend reality for a while, tap into our inner child and make us enjoy the marvelous feeling of wonder.
Nicolas Heron
*Even scientists at the Stanford Research Institute (more info: http://skepdic.com/geller.html)
