This is the second of a series of three essays that Owen Lean has graciously allowed us to publish on the site. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, please comment and tell me what you think

“These metaphysics of magicians and necromantic books are heavenly… a sound magician is a mighty god!” – Christopher Marlow: Dr Faustus

According to legends, Doctor Faustus, a professor at Wittenburg university in the late seventeenth century, having achieved the pinnacle of scholastic achievement made a diabolic contract with Mephistopheles, the servant of the devil. In exchange for his soul Faustus was granted twenty four years of almighty power upon the earth which he used to pass away the time and briefly satisfy hisinsatiable lust for knowledge until finally he was taken unto eternal damnation for his sins. Rather sad really.

The myth of Doctor Faustus is one which truly fascinated me as a magician. For I believe there is a Faustian pact we make when we become magicians.

When we learn magic we gain the power to perform miracles beyond belief, break the rules of reality and show people something that is potentially life changing. However in exchange we feel as if Mephistopheles has indeed taken part of our soul. We lose the ability to be amazed, we find ourselves unable to appreciate miracles and find ourselves turning into sceptical and cynical old men, tattered and withered like Dorian Gray’s picture decomposing in his attic. It is a trade off, an unholy trade off. But one I wouldn’t want to reverse even if I could. I’ve made my diabolic contract and now I want to make the most of it. What makes me despair is seeing magic used for such pathetically meaningless purposes as it is most commonly used for.

What are these people using their infernal trade off for? To make a silk handkerchief disappear and maybe, just maybe raise the briefest of briefest smiles as they interrupt someone’s conversation for the sake of ’showing someone a trick’. Even that word goes against everything I want my magic to be. Its degrading isn’t it? A ‘trick’. How can a ‘trick’ ever be meaningful? How can a ‘trick’ ever be art? How can a ‘trick’ ever be more than a trumped up schoolboy prank with no more purpose than to fool some one and put us one tiny mental notch up the ladder above that person? Even the word ‘illusion’ which has become very popular doesn’t cut it for me. By its definition an ‘illusion’ is something that isn’t real, and after all what is reality except what we perceive with our minds and senses. If my eyes and brain tell me that the object in front of me is floating or the man I’m talking to is levitating then it doesn’t matter whether there is some device holding that man or object up – it is now part of my reality. When a card metamorphs in my hands and someone watching truly believes it’s happened. Then as far as ‘reality’ is concerned has it just not happened?

This is the power of magic for me. We live in a world where we find ourselves lost without imagination, without direction, without hope allowing ourselves to drift aimlessly in a sea of nine to five existence’s and alcoholic binges as our only ‘release’ as the people manipulating our lives continue to pull the strings and make us dance to their command. Magic has the power to change that. Magic can shake peoples world up to the foundation, grab there soul screaming from there body for a brief second and scream at them that there is so much more to the world than what they have been indoctrinated to believe. No other art form has the power of doing this in the way that close-up magic can. The painter may be able to conjure up images that inspire us, and the musician maybe be able to whisk aural metaphors that communicate beyond language but only the magician has the power of the miracle at his disposal.

In the same way the hieroglyphics call primal truths to us from thousands of years in the past and an aboriginal talking drum carries the ‘dreamings’ of tribes across the Australian outback so can our magic call across the deserts of our spectators minds into the billowing oceans of their subconscious. And that is power. The sort of phenomenal power Faustus relinquished his place in eternal paradise for, but now we have that power are we to waste it by using it for the same pointless amusements as himself? Or do we seize that power, like Lady Macbeth tempted by the wyrd sisters. Let us sign the contract, bite the forbidden fruit and show some sympathy for the devil or whatever tempted us in the first place.

I know I may not always be successful in my attempts to wake people up from the ‘reality’ they’ve got so used to but if it happens only once and I can use my art to in some way create something more meaningful then just fooling my audience. Then I’ll know my Faustian pact was worth it.

Owen Lean
Authors note: Please note I’m speaking metaphorically. Don’t really sell your soul to satan, thats a really really daft thing to do folks.