Now that word is spreading across the Internet that copies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Magic” are being delivered, I’m seeing an awful lot of activity here at the digital home of Escamoteurettes in the form of Google searches for hints at what’s between those beautiful covers.
The new book by Max Maven, published by Hermetic Press, was described as “an unpleasant little book that no discerning library should be without. Over a century in the making. No tricks. Only one secret, but it’s a killer!”
Not much to go on, is it? I made my guess over a week ago. And, as I told Steve Bryant in an email today, I was wrong — but at least I’m consistent, darn it.
It will be eternally unfortunate for that sorry soul who tips the secret, but that hasn’t stopped Mike Maddox from listing his copy for sale on eBay. Bidding started at $1 and has already skyrocketed to $3 $76 $91 $100 — where she stops nobody knows.
Powered by FireStats
The interesting thing will be who will win the title of the magician who can’t keep a secret. Not that too many can…
It’s a gentleman’s request, so it’s a filthy mongrel who tips the secret to those outside the 500 few. It will happen. It has to happen because honor has lost its place here in the 21st century and so many are actually proud of that.
John,
Sad but true. One of the things that I continually struggle with is that ours is an art based on secrets yet I have never found many magicians who can keep a secret.
I am often amazed at magicians who ask how something is done and then are offended when I do tell them. Instead, I point them towards the source that they can obtain it themselves.
If you do not have to work for something, you tend not to value it.
“If you do not have to work for something, you tend not to value it.”
Man, is that ever the truth. Evidence of it is all around.
Even in the world of the Internet and magic, where PDFs of magic tricks and books are downloaded without any regard to intellectual property rights, the recipients are, for the most part, clueless as to what it is they are gathering. Downloaded booty becomes just so many cancelled postage stamps shoved into an envelope for collection and not much more — because there is no value attached to them.
Here in the USA, people who won’t work are rewarded. It is axiomatic: you get more of the behavior you reward. And that’s just one reason poverty will never, ever be wiped out.