The two men stood facing each other, the stranger was looking at him intently. He had the most compelling eyes. As the magician looked into them the room seemed to shudder slightly. In a second he recognised the signs and then he was back and actually laughed. “Hey, that was pretty good,” he said. “I’m a stone cold hostile subject and you got me to stage one.” As he spoke the man held up his hand. It held the magician’s wallet. “Good lift,” the conjurer admitted. “Now give it back and get out.” The stranger threw the wallet into the air, where it burst into flames before it hit the ground. As it touched the carpet, it crumbled into ash.
The conjurer was impressed in spite of himself. A most professional dip, followed by a full sight switch in bright light and instant remote combustion, all close up. He hadn’t caught the dip and certainly not the switch. “Because you weren’t looking for them,” said the stranger, reading his thoughts. “I caught you unawares. Now you’re aware. Watch this.”
He reached inside his suit pocket and produced a handkerchief. He methodically and precisely began to unfold it. The conjurer was instantly bored, but something inside him told him to keep looking. The man continued to unfold the handkerchief. He continued to unfold it until the magician realised that this was no normal piece of cloth. Thirty seconds later the stranger held up sash of material that was taller and wider than he was. He held it up in front of him at each of the top corners, with only his hands now visible to the magician. A moment later he saw the man’s hands release the cloth and it fell to the floor, the stranger behind it now gone. The conjurer was stunned. He was even more stunned to hear a quiet cough behind him. He spun round to see his uninvited guest sitting on a sofa.
It took him five seconds. What he’d seen was impossible. “You got me to stage two, you clever bastard. Bring me out of it now,” he demanded. The stranger smiled. “You’re not under. Surely you don’t believe that you could be mesmerised that quickly?” The truth was, he didn’t. He wasn’t susceptible. He knew the tricks of the trade. The stranger spoke again, interrupting his thoughts “I’m here representing the League,” he said.
The man had his attention. That he had to admit. “You have five minutes,” he snapped.
“Very well,” his guest nodded. “You’ve rather rudely been ignoring our invitations. Actually, you’ve been rather rude generally. We’ve decided that it’s got to stop.”
He continued, “the League has been in existence, in some form or another, since the very beginnings of magic. It was formed initially as a forum where those who practiced could come together in the company of like-minded individuals to exchange ideas. It’s always been a secret of course. Secrets are the source of our power. That much I know you understand. The forum evolved over time as a keeper of these great secrets, and to keep the practitioners and the very greatest exponents of our art close to the true spirit of the power we possess. To entertain and to do good for those who would hold us in awe. To encourage responsibility in those blessed in the craft.”
The magician laughed, “Yeah right. Then why haven’t I heard about you then?”
The stranger leaned forward. “Because, my young friend, you are not a great conjurer. You have not even started. When measured against the likes of Keller, Thurston, Houdini or Blackstone you are merely a flim flam man. A gaudy and unsophisticated charlatan too caught up in his own naked greed to even begin to understand the elegance of your chosen profession. And I’m only mentioning names that you’ll know. The vast majority of the League are not even in the public eye. This has always been our way. We are the keepers, the guardians of the gift.”
The magician reacted in fury. “A flim flam man? I’m the biggest fucking name in the business! Don’t come round here lecturing me about a sad bunch of amateurs jerking off in private pretending all this is real. We do tricks. We con people because they’re too weak minded to work out how we do it. That’s it, pure and simple.”
Unmoved, the stranger answered him. “Is it? What is real magic? If you perform a spectacular vanish that no one can fathom, then it’s magic to the observer.”
“Yeah,” interrupted the magician, “It’s magic to them not to us. That’s the real gig. We know it’s not real.”
“Magic is all around us,” his guest offered carefully. “It’s constantly present. Sometimes recognised and sometimes not. You and I and a few select others have the ability to tap into it. We have a responsibility.”
“No we don’t,” argued the conjurer. “We’re just deceivers. We have no responsibility. Their pathetic weakness provides us with a living. That’s it. End of story.”
“We don’t feel the same way,” the stranger murmured. “We’d rather like you to fall in line and stop being such a bore. You do show so much promise.”
“Promise?” barked the magician. “I could buy you out of small change”
“I seriously doubt it,” the stranger responded, “Speaking of small change, do you have any? I want to show you something I think you’ll rather like.” Grudgingly, the conjurer pulled four coins from his pocket and placed them on a coffee table in front of the stranger, who picked them up and stared at them thoughtfully. “Did you know that the word ‘magic’ derives from the ancient Greek word ‘magi’ which was used to describe…”
The magician butted in, “Yeah, I know, the magi were a bunch of Babylonians who were thought to have the power to control demons and the like. It was a religious gig. I know my stuff for Christ’s sakes.”
“I suspect not as well as you think,” the stranger spoke quietly. “These Babylonians followed a great teacher called Zoroaster, a very wise man who based his teachings on three principles. Maybe you recall them? Good reflection, good word, and good deeds. In the League we do our best to uphold these principles. And, whilst we are tolerant men and women by nature, sometimes these principles need defending more robustly than we would normally feel comfortable with. That’s why I’m here. You are enormously talented. If you, well, adapted, it would be most beneficial, especially for you. All that we ask is that you affect a measure of consideration and gentleness in your performance and attitude. We have no problem with you profiting from your endeavours, but to quote the good Lord. “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
The magician didn’t even hesitate. “Don’t even think of bringing fucking religion into this. ‘To whom much is given?’ Nobody ever gave me anything pal. All I have is the result of hard work. Why are you giving me all this cosmic bullshit? We just do tricks. I’m on the gravy train. I’ve got a first class one way ticket.”
The stranger started passing the coins between his hands. “Are you saying there’s no way that I can influence you to stop bringing our craft into disrepute? Are you really so convinced that we’re all just con artists? Are you committed to the principle that our skilful and elegant presentations are merely smoke and mirrors? I’d heard you had no redeeming features but I refused to believe it. It’s in my nature to seek out the best in people. That’s why The League charged me to make this visit. I thought I could make a difference. Is your current course unstoppable? Have I failed?”
The magician was now irritated. The man’s words bounced off him like drops of rain. “Are you going to do a trick with those coins or not?”
With a shrug of resignation, his guest laid the four coins out on the table in front of him. He muttered an incantation under his breath, and as the magician watched, the four coins rose into the air and hovered in front of him. It was good, he had to admit. “Want to check for wires?” enquired the stranger. Intrigued, he approached the floating coins and traced his hands around them. No wires. He was impressed. No, he was more than impressed. He reached out to pluck one of the apparently floating coins from the air. As he touched the first one, it vanished. Just like that. One minute it was there and the next it wasn’t. He instinctively reached for the next coin. At that moment the remaining three also vanished. The magician blinked in amazement and then laughed.
“That was fuck
ing good, Abracadabra man! Oh, and by the way, that comes from an Aramaic phrase avra kehdabra. It means, “I will create as I speak.”
“Actually, my young unrepentant friend, it’s a far older incantation, but I do agree it’s an appropriate phrase to use after the execution of this trick. Let me demonstrate.” He looked up and thrust a bony finger in the magician’s direction. “Abracadabra!” he shouted.
The magician burst into flames. In a moment, like his wallet before him, he was a pile of ash on the carpet.
The stranger stood up. “As I said, it’s a far more ancient spell. It’s actually from the Babylonian abbada ke dabra. It means, ‘Perish like the word.’”
- The End -
THE PROGRAM
She’d never flunked out of a program before and she certainly wasn’t going to flunk out of this one. It just wasn’t her way. She’d push till it broke. And it always did such was the force of her perseverance.
It was this single-minded attitude that had enabled her to go so very far. Further even than her greatest mentors had ever predicted or could have even imagined. Her parents, her professors, her instructors and guides would be shocked to know how far she’d gone. An irony of course. Even if they had have known they could never even begin to actually comprehend where she now found herself.
Her journey had been a long one though she now preferred the term ‘quest’. Despite being blessed/cursed with a deep beauty, she’d never bought into the human myth, preferring instead intellectual challenges and an undisguised wonder about the nature of existence itself. As far back as she could remember she’d wanted and needed to experience the unusual and unique and, occasionally, the extreme. The mundane constraints of terrestrial existence held no attraction for her. Study was her purview. To understand, to learn, to question relentlessly as opposed to accepting the norm. Not for her a husband, children and the prison that they represented. Not that she eschewed love and ecstasy. She embraced them, savoured them and relished the release and altered states they could engender. Sadly her unabashed hedonism intimidated most of those she allowed close. The men and women whom she shared it with inevitably fell into the time-honoured trap of adoration or loathing, through lack of understanding or the need to possess. It didn’t help that she pushed those close to her as much as she pushed herself. She needed to know, to comprehend and would accept no boundaries, even in relationships and especially in intimacy. Under this barrage people continually disappointed her, but she felt able to live with it. There were more important things demanding her attention.
From the time she was able to walk she knew she needed to fly. It was a first stage, she reasoned. A first stage in leaving the mundane constraints and trivia of human existence. She took her first flying lesson on her sixteenth birthday.
Existence, she had come to understand, was about moments. Some moments were more significant than others. At least that was what she once thought. She now knew that this was simply an observational function. Moments, and their significance, merely reflected the state of mind of the person experiencing them. This profound understanding was not yet part of her rationale when she went solo for the first time.
She’d lined up the flimsy Cessna into the wind on the grass airfield. With a mounting excitement she’d released the toe brakes, opened the throttle and commenced her bouncy take off run in the woefully underpowered aeroplane. Not that that mattered. The moment her wheels left the ground her rapture threatened to overcome her. She was free. For the next thirty minutes she skipped though the clouds in a state of near Zen like tranquillity. The freedom sucked her in with its enchanting soothing embrace. She was never the same again.
From that moment on she plunged into the books with a rapaciousness that even had her teachers concerned about the almost fanatical level of her dedication. They didn’t understand. In those thirty minutes of solo flight she’d finally caught a glimpse of true liberation, of something different, something not related to the trivialities of an Earth bound existence. This was what she had been seeking. Wonder, awe and release. Release to express that which she was. Or at least, that which she thought she was.
Her single mindedness knew no boundaries. As time went by she grew increasingly irritated by humanity and the lack of quality candidates to share her and her dreams. She was equally slack jawed with what she perceived as the lack of substance of the dreams of those she met. She now realised that she had been judgmental, and that she’d not understood enough to comprehend the fine line between pity and compassion. At the time she had brushed off such thoughts as she focused relentlessly on her goals. Despite the enormous barriers put in her way, she succeeded in achieving her objectives.
She recalled the time that when she’d felt that only specific moments were important. After her Cessna flight, the next such occasion was during a perfect afternoon in the middle of the Sea of Japan. Her gloved hands feathered the throttles of her twitchy F14 Tomcat fighter as she turned into the downward leg of her final approach to the floating city that was the USS Nimitz. A floating city it may have been but from her position it looked like a matchbox. Fear rose up inside her and gripped her. It thrilled her with its impact. Her Ivy League education hadn’t prepared her for this. Her first carrier landing. She fought the pitching monster, managing its immense power as the warm air rising from the ocean buffeted her and her charge. When she’d eventually hit the cold hard steel of the carrier deck, perfectly hooking the arrestor wire and decelerating from 140 miles per hour to zero in 150 yards, it was all she could do not to scream out loud in ecstasy. Strapping a fast jet to her back had been the ultimate rush. So far. Within three years it had palled. She needed more.
Emotionally she needed more too. Increasingly irritated by the limitations and constraints of her physical and professional relationships, she plunged with abandon into spirituality. She absorbed new age and traditionalist teachings with an almost manic possession. Jaded by the restrictions of military flying, she left the Navy and embraced the hallowed halls of Caltech. There she immersed herself in the mysteries of astrophysics and cosmology and the unique elegance they offered. She walked with intellectual giants and opened herself up to their awesome knowledge. She delved into the insights of Fermi, Einstein, Feynman and Hawking and let their lustre brush off on her.
Four years later, with yet another master’s degree to her name, she realised that her own education had only just begun. Even as she received her degree certificate, she knew it was, as indeed were all things, simply a collection of protons and neutrons spinning around, their electro magnetic fields giving the illusion of reality. As a result of her studies she now also understood that the entire universe was equally empty and bereft of what most would refer to as substance…but not meaning.
Now she knew more, she knew that she knew even less than she had ever expected. The meaningless of time, the fact that space was composed of virtually nothing and that within that empty vortex, humanity apparently existed. What was humanity? What was she? Why was anything anything? To even begin to understand the universe and her place in it, she knew she needed to experience more of it. She immersed herself with new vigour in the study of her spirituality, and embarked on yet another new demanding program.
As the shuttle reached apogee, the first rays of the ever-rising sun came over the curvature of the Earth. The first time she ever saw it she thought her heart would stop such was the beauty of the moment. Ignoring the scene she gently nudged the liquid fuel manoeuvring thrusters, turning the vehicle into the correct vector for re entry. Her eyes executed a practiced sweep over the various readouts, noting with satisfaction that the gimbal rates were congruent with her own calculations. Down range, Mission Control advised her that she was go for descent. With one last wistful look at the heavens above her, the shuttle commander carefully edged her charge into the controlled fall that would take her and her crew back to earth.
As she was violently shaken by the enormous friction of the descent into the atmosphere, she felt almo
st detached. It was her third time and second as commander. She knew she’d gone as far as she could. She’d seen and experienced the very limit of human endeavour and reached as far out into the cosmos as she was ever going to. It wasn’t enough!
There was one last occasion before she stopped looking at specific moments as being important and realised that they were all important. It was after five years of study in a bitterly cold monastery on the outskirts of Osaka in Southern Japan. It was also at the end of one of the most challenging programs she’d ever set herself.
At the end of a particularly exhausting day, she’d stumbled into her Roshi’s enclave, her legs numb from eight hours of straight Zazen meditation. Eight hours of continual mental interrogation into the conundrum given to students by their instructors. A mental conundrum so obscure it was designed so that the very act of interrogating it would enable the mind to go beyond itself and allow true enlightenment to occur. True paradoxes to be meditated upon. These apparently bizarre puzzles were called Koans. Hers was a classic: What was your face before your parents were born?
Her head and body aching from the concentration, she sat stiffly in front of her instructor for her daily interview session. Despite her physical exhaustion, her mind was unusually alert and focused. “What is Zen?” he barked at her. Something about his tone seemed to rip into her head. For reasons that she didn’t understand at the time, she just smiled at him. “Good,” her master murmured.
The Roshi indicated his flowing robe. “Is this material Zen?” he asked, more gently this time.
“It cannot be,” she answered with confidence.
“And why is that?” her interrogator demanded.
With a sudden total clarity she answered. As she spoke she heard her words as if someone else were saying them. “It cannot be Zen, therefore it must be. Zen is that which it is not, therefore it must be that which it is.” Alert now, her Roshi saw that the moment was almost upon her. “Are you Zen?” he asked, almost so quietly she had difficulty making out his words.
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