7 Reasons to Learn Magic as an Adult

Question:  Do I have to be a performing magician to learn magic?

Answer:  Of course not. You just have to love magic!

Greetings magic lovers!

Did you know that most people who love magic do not perform magic? I often have to explain to friends, that, just as with the opera, most of the people who love the performance of magic are not performers themselves…but they have a deep appreciation for the art.

Many of the people that I teach are what I call “magic lovers” or “magic enthusiasts.”

Magic enthusiasts come from all walks of life.

Just in the past few years I have shared my magic lessons with many students of magic who are business people, screen writers, actors, truck drivers, housewives, stay at home dads, politicians, government officials and more – all of whom who love magic as a hobby.

Learning Magic is a great way to enrich your life,

7 REASONS TO LEARN MAGIC AS AN ADULT

  1. Learning magic increases self-confidence.
  2. Studying the art promotes self-discipline.
  3. Learning how magicians think sharpens your critical thinking skills.
  4. Performing a simple magic illusion can bring great joy to others.
  5. Magic can help us learn to approach people and enhance our socializing skills.
  6. Magic is an international language that transcends cultural boundaries, and a great way to meet people.
  7. People think magic is very hip and cool these days!

One of my students, Ming Da, wrote a great article on the life-enriching qualities that studying magic can add to your life! You might enjoy it: http://mformagic.biz/?p=895

If you are one of those enthusiasts who think you might like to actually learn more about performing, you may want to consider our upcoming Spring Training classes, March 20-25. You can come for just two days, or for all six. Learn more here: http://www.magicalwisdom.com/events – 561
Nick Diffatte – First time on stage at Wonderground
First Eugene Burger Legacy Awards are Announced
We are delighted to announce that the first two Eugene Burger Legacy Award recipients have been announced. They are two of our favorite magicians, Kim Z (Kim Zoller) and Dr. Geoff Grimes.
Created in collaboration with Eugene’s estate, these awards recognize artists who we believe exemplify Eugene’s highest values and qualities as a magician. Winners of the award will forever carry Eugene’s name forward in relation to their own, and they will also receive a merit-based full-tuition scholarship to any class at the McBride Magic & Mystery School in Las Vegas.

Donations to the Eugene Burger Legacy Fund can be made by going to www.magicalwisdom.com/eugene.

A Magical Party
This month we are hosting a very special party honoring The Wonderground All-stars!

We will have special events planned for the opening of all the shows!

Experience the Close-up magic of Rocco – One Show Only!
WONDERGROUND NEWS 
Join us for the biggest magic party in Vegas!
Thursday March 15th, 2018 7:30pm. 3 big shows! All info at www.vegaswonderground.com. Nick Diffatte and Superstars of close up magic Rocco Silano & Allan Ackerman!!!
PLUS an ALL STAR-line up!

Here is the schedule:
7:30 PM  Strolling magic Will Bradshaw, Taylor Lloyd & Allen Scott will do tarot readings

8:00 PM  Comedy Magic & Variety — Your host Tim Wise
Michael Tetro – From Burning Man to Hollywood
Jeff Lockett — Con Man Confidential
Kevin Hall –  The Wild Man of Magic
Nick Diffatte –The New Comedy Star of Vegas!

9:00 PM — Your host is Will Bradshaw
Allan Ackerman — The Las Vegas Card Expert
Michael Tetro – Hollywood’s New Magic Sensation
Kevin Hall — Madcap Mayhem
Rocco — Modern Master of Mystery

10:00 PM  — Your host is Clyde McBride
Sonny Fontana — An Illusion that Is NOT to be Seen!
Kevin Hall — Comedy Magic as Seen on AGT
Michael Tetro – Magic in “Flow-Motion”
Nick Diffatte — The NEW star of Comedy Magic
Jeff McBride  — Toast of the Town!

See the Las Vegas Card Expert in Action.
PLUS:  Photography by Sheryl Garrett. Bar Magic with Zack Pattee. Scott Steelfyre, Corey Rubino, NEW Belly Dancers, Psychic Sideshow with Alan Scott, live art with Areeya – and many more surprises and special celebrity guests!!

We are now preparing for our upcoming classes on tour, online and here in Las Vegas. Please drop us an email and let us know when you plan to visit!

Your friends in magic,

Jeff and Abbi

Help Us Make History

Hello friends,

Tonight is a very important night for all of your friends at the Magic & Mystery School.

Tonight, Monday, March 5, at 7:00 pm, pacific time, We launch the very first in a new series.

THE MYSTERY SCHOOL MINUTE
Each and every week this year, we will be bringing you golden nuggets of wisdom, from the Faculty of the Magic & Mystery School.  Below are just a few examples of the themes we will be exploring on each episode.

Tune in and experience the launch of our new format and new approach for Mystery School Monday. It will be a live, discussion-based class on magic hosted by JEFF MCBRIDE.

Tobias Beckwith will offer his many years of experience in theater and in business.

Lawrence Hass, the Dean of the Magic & Mystery School gives you his insights into the philosophy and art of magic.

You must be a member of the McBride Magic & Mystery School to attend. You can attend this live, online magic class every Monday night, by becoming a member. Please go to: www.virtual.magicalwisdom.com/members/signup.

We look forward to seeing you in the classroom, and we thank you for helping to make us the longest-running magic web TV show in history!

Your friends in magic,

Jeff, Tobias and Larry

Creating Business Magic

Creating Business Magic.

Dear Friends:

I’m convinced that most performing magicians aren’t fully aware of the very real power of our magic. Far beyond its ability to entertain, magic can help us shift our audiences’ attitudes and beliefs. The lessons we learn when we learn magic can be applied in many different areas of our lives. This month’s Museletter features some profound thoughts of how this works from our good friend David Morey. If you’ve attended Magic & Meaning or one of our Master Classes in Mentalism, you probably already know David and his work. If not, let me enlighten you about some of David’s qualifications.

Chairman and CEO of DMG Global and Vice Chairman of Core Strategy Group, David is one of America’s leading strategic consultants. He is the award-winning co-author of The Underdog Advantage (McGraw Hill), and has helped add hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and value to a wide range of Fortune 500 companies. Mr. Morey has worked with some of the world’s top business leaders—and with five Nobel Peace Prize winners and eighteen winning global presidential campaigns. He is also an accomplished magical performer.

Along with Eugene Burger and former acting head of the CIA, John McLaughlin, David has written a new book, due out next month, about how the lessons we learn from magic can translate to other areas of our lives, and particularly to business. Here is David Morey:

CREATING BUSINESS MAGIC

“Explains how thinking like a magician can take you and your endeavors to new heights of success.”

–from the foreword by David Copperfield.

Thinking like a magician—or, as our first corporate client, Steve Jobs, used to say, “thinking different”—is a remarkably powerful way to think about business and take wing to new heights of success. This is the central argument of our new book: Creating Business Magic: How the Power of Magic Can Inspire, Innovate, and Revolutionize Your Business, by David Morey, Eugene Burger, and John McLaughlin (Mango April 2018). CLICK HERE

We three authors have been mixing this magical broth for almost a decade, and the book is dedicated to our dear teacher, mentor, and friend, Eugene Burger, who moved to what he himself called the “ultimate capital M Mystery of life” while this work was nearing completion. But let us be clear: This is not Eugene’s last book or final chapter, because his voice from these pages is as enduring as are his teachings.

All three of us came to write this book through magic—but we all are more than magicians: a political and corporate strategist, a world-renowned magical thinker and philosopher, and the former acting director of the CIA. Our mission: Apply to the strategic innovation of business, everything we know about magic—as we say in the introduction:

“In writing this book, our objective is not to create a new generation of magicians, but to publish in one place and for the first time, the Creating Business Magic strategies of the world’s greatest magicians—to use the force and metaphor of magic to empower boundless imagination, drive leadership, and create success in your business, your career, and your future. At the core of this book is the belief that imagination can make magicians of us all.”

Over 50 years ago, consulting legend Peter Drucker said: “Business has only two functions: marketing and innovation.” And the magician inside us all brings to marketing and innovation—and to life itself—untapped magical strategies, magical synergies, and magical powers.

The magician’s magical powers include the ability to understand perception, drive aspiration, fuel imagination, anticipate change, direct attention, bolster persuasion, grab the dialogue, and empower belief. Our book shows how using magic as metaphor and applying the principles of conjuring can challenge assumptions and empower imagination to:

  • Lead Change: Imagine what the audience thinks, rewrite the marketplace rules, and apply bold problem-solving.
  • “Think Different”: Challenge and change assumptions to help unlock memory, reason, and imagination.
  • Play Offense: Absorb this all-critical principle of strategic and business success—control the competitive dialogue, move to the attack, exploit challenges, and never play defense.
We are deeply proud of this work, this primer on magical thinking, across its nine magically disruptive strategies and three sections: IMAGINE . . . PLOT . . . EMPOWER. The book is written for everyone who wants to “think different,” to think like a magician. By the way, this will be the subject of a brand-new “Business Magic,” seminar we’ll be launching this fall (October 11-13) with the McBride Magic and Mystery School—for a small group of magical and business thinkers. http://www.magicalwisdom.com/events#574
David Copperfield’s generous foreword to our book wonderfully summarizes the journey we hope you will soon take:

“Creating Business Magic” takes the reader along a path of genuinely magical thinking. Beginning with imagination, the authors illuminate the power of perception, ways to innovate, to think out of the box, break down conceptual barriers, and finally bring out the magician inside us all. These are the essential ingredients of every powerful magic performance, and here the authors take you behind the scenes in magic to explain how thinking like a magician can move you into new realms of imagination, creativity, and accomplishment.”

Our idea of synergizing magic and business is inspired by Albert Einstein’s wonderful quote: “imagination is more important than knowledge.” This, in fact, is fuel that drives our core argument—that imagination is the secret source of all magic and all magicians, and that imagination has driven progress and breakthrough across the ages. Imagination invented the wheel, imagination created the information revolution, and imagination just sent an unmanned spacecraft all the way to Pluto.

We magicians know that the real magic happens well before any show begins—in the way we learn, prepare, practice, rehearse, disrupt, experiment, and strategize. This is the real magic of any magical performance, just as it is the real magic of any innovation, any business, or the conquering of any of life’s challenges.

Our book, then, is a tribute to the magician inside us all—because our inner magician is so very and increasingly important today. As we write:

“For every one of us, the way of magic is the way of slow movement along a path of growing and learning to be a magician. Whatever philosophical beliefs you hold, accept this book as an argument for “fideism,” for empowering your own beliefs. In the case of the authors, these are the beliefs of the magician. Believing in what you do, say, and live is the ultimate calling of your inner magician. “I have something wonderful to show you tonight,” was co- author Eugene Burger’s favorite pre-show mantra. So it should be for all of us. We all have something wonderful to show you tonight.”

We magicians have so many wonderful things to show you tonight: So many wonderful ways—in and out of business—to help put to work innovation, invention, and imagination. This is our inner magician’s real secret. It is, more than ever, a secret we need today in business and in leadership. This is the secret of the magician inside us all—the remarkable power of our imagination.

The Real Hogwarts

Photo Credit: Sheryl A. Garrett
Augmentation by: Animated Conjuror

For thousands of years, magical secrets have been handed down from master to student… Now you can become part of that tradition.
http://www.magicalwisdom.com/about/winter-training

“The real secrets of magic are passed from master to student… in whispers.”

                     – Eugene Burger

Photo Credit: Sheryl A. Garrett

“It’s like a day at the real Hogwarts”We have a new video trailer that shows our team hosting 30 corporate executives at our Magic & Mystery School. During our 3-hour custom-made event, participants experienced:

  • An immersive theatrical magic stage show with our faculty and special guests;
  • A guided tour of the Mystery School Museum and Curiosity shop;
  • A world-class close-up magic show;
  • 5 magic lessons with everyday objects teaching how to control people’s attention and solve impossible challenges — and a “Bag of Tricks” that included teaching DVDs, props, and even a real magic wand that can do magic.

The participants raved about this unique experience… take a look.

“The BEST event we have ever attended in Las Vegas!”

Call Abigail to book your next event at our venue. 702-450-0021

Q: What do the following magicians have in common?

Mac King, Teller, David Copperfield, Mike Hammer, Mat Franco, Xavier Mortimer, Greg Gleason, Criss Angel,  Tommy Wind, Chris Randall

A: They all have unique shows in Las Vegas and every one of them has given back to magic by sharing their wisdom at the Magic & Mystery School with our students! Thank you to all our superstar guests for sharing your secrets of success with our students.

Guess who visited Mystery School?

You will never believe who shows up at the end of this video below!

Become a Master of Attention

Magicians are masters at attracting, holding, directing and mis-directing attention… their livelihood depends on it!

“Street Performers use powerful tools for grabbing attention and holding it.
You can use these skills in your indoor shows, presentations and business talks!”

Register now: http://www.magicalwisdom.com/events

My favorite street magic routine

“BRAVO!” is what the audiences say every time I perform this routine!

After years of study, I created what I feel is my best version of the “Cup and Ball” illusion. I’ve studied the masterworks of Rezvani, Benson, Vernon and Garcia… and have put everything I have learned into this exciting routine.

Would you like to take advantage of all the work I’ve done on this piece for yourself? You can find BRAVO HERE:
https://www.magicalwisdom.com/shop/p/street-magic/squeak-technique
WONDERGROUND – Super Magic Party
Now going into our 10th year!February 15, 2018
8pm    Tim Wise is your MC
Dave Johnson – Comedy Magic
Buster Balloon – Twisted Illusions
Will Bradshaw – From Hollywood to Vegas!
Jeff McBride – Sparks In the Dark!
R. J. Cantu – Magician to the Stars!9pm    Will Bradshaw is your MC
Jeff McBride
Tim Wise
Jeff Lockett
Dave Johnson10pm   Jeff McBride – Voodoo People
Tony Molesworth – Musical Comedy
Buster Balloon - Master Blaster!
MonDre – Modern Master of Mystery
Rudy Coby – The Coolest Magician on Earth
R. J Cantu – Master of Laser Illusions
Plus SURPRISE GUEST
(under contract so we can’t advertise!)PLUS: Photography by Sheryl Garrett. Bar Magic with Zack Pattee, Scott Steelfyre, Corey Rubino, Taylor Lloyd, New World Rythmatism Belly Dancers, Psychic Sideshow with Alan Scott, live art with Areeya – and many more surprises and special celebrity guests

One final thought… The following quote inspires me to practice my magic every day…what is your daily practice? What habits are you cultivating this season?

Abigail and I send you our love.
We hope see you at the Mystery School here in Las Vegas or – on any night — just tune into mcbridemagic.tv. We are always here to inspire you!Jeff & Abigail

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