Can magic heal?
Why everyone should know at least one magic trick, and one to learn right now
If I were appointed king of the world, my first official act would be to ask that every child born be given their own magic trick at birth. The trick—its effect, the secret and any materials needed—would be bestowed upon the child at a later age but early on, perhaps seven years old.
It could be as simple as making a coin vanish. A card magically rising out of the deck. A ring melting off of a piece of string. Little miracles, all well within the capabilities of anyone willing and able to follow directions.
At the appointed age, the child would be apprenticed to a certified magician-teacher to learn the trick inside and out. The child would be sworn to secrecy. They would be encouraged to dance with this bit of magic for the rest of their lives, honing it, perfecting it, changing it, embellishing it, even teaching it to others who promise to adhere to the Magician’s Code to never reveal the secret. With something special always in tow, people would be far less inclined to hate, fight, sow division or clamor for attention in menacing ways. The world would begin to heal.
Wait: A different trick—for nearly eight billion people? This isn’t as farfetched as it sounds. Magicians have created illusions throughout human history and hundreds if not thousands of tricks are invented every week. There are enough magic tricks out there, many of them safely tucked away in books at your public library, to supply everyone on earth with a bit of legerdemain that is uniquely their own. (You could also hop on over to online magic shops like Vanishing Inc., Penguin Magic or The Magic Warehouse, or books sold online to the general public.) Not surprisingly, the world has plenty of magic to go around.
And what would the world get in return for following my request?
Your magic, my magic. For starters, it would level the human playing field in an imaginative way. Everyone would understand that everyone else had something special about them. (True anyway, but making it exceedingly obvious is exactly the point.) Upon meeting someone, instead of asking, “What do you do?”—which doesn’t mean “How do you live your life?” but the soul-emptying “How do you make money?”—people could greet each other by smiling and saying, “Tell me. What is your magic?”
Imagine that. Imagine more people seeing something special in others and themselves, and having it acknowledged.
A default to openness. People would become more welcoming overall, as the default in human relations would not be hesitation, suspicion or outright hostility but a benevolent and healthy curiosity. Would this curiosity be enough to overcome the scourge of our age—fear of the other? We won’t know until we try. As physicians say about a remedy whose safety is proven but whose efficacy is not: can’t hurt, could help. To go a bit further down that road, to assume magic in everyone could have a grand placebo effect, perhaps the greatest trick of all, one humankind plays on itself: a general acceptance of the importance of play and a default to playfulness and openness. Can’t hurt. Could most definitely help.
Keeping promises. Trusted with playful secrets, humans would also discover safe ground on which to learn the rewards of fidelity. By honoring the Magician’s Code and never revealing the secret to their personal trick, not only would everyone have that edge on everyone else we all secretly covet, people would learn—no, feel—the value of the first of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements: Be impeccable with your word. One of the greatest thrills of being a magician is knowing stuff other people don’t. With my kingly wish, everyone would know what that feels like. Encouraged to keep that one promise, they might be more inclined to keep others. This alone could change and even save lives.
Connection. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all to being given a unique magic trick at birth is having something to carry with you throughout your life that calls out the best in you—something to tinker with, set aside, revisit, reinvent, reimagine—something that is always evolving, the goal always being to see jaws drop and people smile (and, ideally, applaud). Your lifelong companion, an ally in helping you connect with others in a world that is far more interdependent than any of us can know. With more people today living alone and in isolation, the world cries out for something to call us back to connection.
I really believe all these benefits of learning magic could heal the world in many of its broken places. Magic is much more than amusement or entertainment. It is about that long-ago moment when we were first delighted by something we couldn't explain. When we show someone a magic trick, we help them remember that—the very first time they experienced wonder, mystery.
Give it a try. Here’s a simple mindreading trick you can learn right now. First I want you to try it on yourself:
Think of any number between 1 and 10.
Multiply the number by 9.
With the resulting number, add the two digits together.
Subtract 5 from the new number.
Find the letter in the alphabet that matches this number (in other words, 1 is A, 2 is B, and so on).
Think of a country that begins with that letter.
Take the second letter of that country and think of an animal that starts with that letter.
Think of the color of the animal.
From across the interwebs I am reading your mind, but I must inform you, regretfully, that there are no gray elephants in Denmark.
The trick works itself. Nine times out of 10, your spectator will be thinking of a gray elephant and the country of Denmark because you have mathematically “forced” the number four and thus the letter D. True, there are other country names beginning with D, like Djibouti and Dominica, but they are less familiar, at least in North America where I’m writing from. And the Dominican Republic is technically “DR.” Likewise, “elephant” is more likely to come to mind than earthworm, earwig or even eagle. (If your spectator says “echidna,” admit defeat and say good-naturedly that you’ve never met a spiny anteater you didn’t like.)
Feel the magic. This trick won’t fool everyone, no. But some, yes. You may be surprised at the reactions you get, from amused to puzzled to downright amazed. And you will see that the point is not to fool but to feel. Wonder. Happiness. Connection. Haven’t you ever wondered why we know magic when we see it? We say, “That’s impossible!” or “How did you do that?” How do we know we've just seen magic? Because almost from the moment we’re born, we know what magic is. And you, clever magician-like being that you are, can remind people of this.
But here is the best news of all. When you show someone else magic, you not only change how they see things, you change how you see yourself. You see yourself helping others in a strange but wonderful way. You see yourself dancing with the impossible. You are being called back to what you knew when you were born. And, with your help, so is your spectator.
All this—in a mindreading trick? Yes. To put everything on hold and just stop to ponder something that defies the natural laws that constrain us is an act of power. Nature herself wouldn’t have it any other way. She knows that that is how we get to know her better.
Magistry: magic + healing. When I became an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister in 2021, midway through the pandemic, I thought my next move would be to serve a congregation somewhere and continue incorporating magic into Sunday mornings, as I had for the previous 20 years as a guest preacher.
Then I turned 60, and I realized I’d spent my adult life trying to make magic more meaningful, and that my highest calling wasn’t to be a minister, it was to be a magician who invites people to help each other—to minister—by using magic to remind each other that the whole world is magical and that by association, so are we. To make magic a healing presence. I think this could be the greatest untapped reservoir of human power we have. I want to release it.
This is why I founded Magistry, a nonprofit that teaches people of all ages how to do simple magic: because magic can heal. When we see magic, but especially if we perform it, we recover something from our childhood that is inoculated against life’s trials, outright trauma and any other outside invaders: our surprise and delight at mystery. Mystery is our birthright. With so much more in the universe unknown than known, magic reminds us that a capacity for surprise, an ability to delight in said mystery, can not only heal, it just might be the key to our survival. Magic, quite literally, could save the world.
