Thoughts On The Classic Silk Vanish Trick, And Tutorial.

-thoughts and tutorial.

The classic Silk Vanish Trick.

This trick is one of the strongest tricks in magic, and sadly the most exposed trick in magic. But in the right hands these two factures can be it’s greatest advantages.

Before street magicians built their crowds with The Vanishing Wand Trick, most street Magicians would use The Silk Vanish.

In fact when I started as a young man, it was so common I decided to not use it, I wanted to try and stand out from the rest.

I had other issues with the silk vanish also, it seemed that many people in society already knew the secret to the trick.

It got to the point, that many times when I would open with it, some heckler would shout out the secret.

In fact as I write this article on the subject, I can only assume most of you know how it works already.

A quick Google search will definitely tell you right away.

So the question begs to be answered, why am I going to do a tutorial on this trick?

Here’s why, after many years of shying away from it’s use, I noticed the old masters, in fact the best in the business, were still using it.

Why?

Because it did so much. Besides doing the silk trick it did hundreds of other tricks not even using a silk.

For instance, changing a one dollar bill into a hundred dollar bill and back again.

I’ve seen street guys do entire shows only using this versatile gimmick alone, because each trick looks completely different than the other, for instance one could even do a cut and restored rope with it.

Imagine your entire street rig is the size of a Chap Stick, and you just use borrowed items.

Also I noticed when the masters used it, they had very special handling.

Lastly, and most importantly, I noticed that they used it to attract good people and Purge undesirables in the very beginning of their crowd building, before they even started a show.

Pay attention here, this is gold.

When building a crowd you could attract the type of people who want to ruin your show before it ever gets started, or worse yet, they may wait until you have a good show going and then try and ruin all your hard work at the worst moment.

Beware there are people like this, who are mean and try and do this to try and hide their insecurities

These are the very type of people who like to yell out the secrets to magic tricks.

I noticed the Masters would use the silk vanish to bait these types of people, that buskers call Roaches.

If the Roach would take the bait, the masters would fool them with a color change or production that the roach couldn’t catch.

This would shut the roach down.

Or sometimes the master would just transition into a monologue or use comedy one line gotchas with no tricks to continue to build a crowd, until the roach would lose interest and leave.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

But the people that stayed to watch, were an ideal crowd of nice people. These people understood how a magic show works and knew how to enjoy it.

So in short, the masters would use the silk vanish trick to purge undesirables and keep the good people, hence preparing the performer with an intelligent audience to work for.

What if there are no Roaches?

If there are no Roaches, this is the ideal scenario.

If there are no Roaches to begin with, the silk vanish trick is a mind blowing visual effect that will do it’s job to stop people.

This trick has everything it needs to attract attention and keep people asking for more, built right into it.

This is why it is such an irresistible bait to roaches, they see the opportunity to brag like monkeys and their brains just shut off and they blurt it out.

This of course leaves them vulnerable to be fooled by just about any other trick you show them, because they think all the other tricks work like this.

Not to mention, they do not have the experience like the performers do to respond to cutting one liners.

It’s sad, but it works.

If this sounds confrontational, I would agree with you, it takes a certain type of character and finesse to not appear like this, and this is why I have continued to shy away from it, but not abandoned it altogether.

This trick is amazing and kids love it. So I will use it at the right times for the right people in the right circumstances.

Some of the masters I’ve seen using this trick to bally their whole lives is Cellini, Toots, Eric Evans, Doug Conn, Sonny Holiday, Istvan, Diobo, Gypsy Joe and many many more.

But I wanted to give a special thanks to Rod Cannon who really sat me down and pointed out some of the subtle tactics of purging with it. He had that subtle finesse I mentioned earlier that made the people watching him, love him.

In the video clip below I have I show my reworking of this classic and will be teaching this and some other tricks in the tutorial today and give some pointers on how to use it on the street like the old masters do in general.

Here’s some old street footage of it in action.

This was an old ad for my book. Which by the way you can get my newest version HERE.

Or if you want to you can leave me a tip here if you get a kick out of the stuff we do here.

In tutorial below we are going to show you how I do the first trick, explain the gimmick and it’s basic use from the beginners stand point, and then we’re going to throw in some pro tips and tricks.

So for those of you with a paid subscription, lets go over some of the various trade secrets of silk magic for busking in the tutorial video below.