Yoshida: 23

Well played.


On another subject, having had the great pleasure of abandoning my research into so-called "practical" magic, I amazingly enough found myself inspired by Howland's tedious, interminable account of his attempt and failure to originally acquire the Magician's knife in the sunken Liberator. There was a section where he described the actions of Crayton inside the vessel:

"With the flourish and panache of a stage magician, he opened his sleeves to show me there was nothing inside of them, then a moment later he extended his arms in our direction and bubbles began to appear from his cuffs. There were only a few at first, then there were so many bubbles that it was like watching jets from a Jacuzzi."

It was this "nothing up my sleeve" gesture as well as the style of the Magician's disappearing trick described in Taras' post that made me consider that perhaps some clues as to our adversary's methodology could be gleaned not from the study of that gibberish pseudo-science of Crowley's, but oddly-enough, instead from actual performance magic.

Of course, these books are talking about mere tricks: slight of hand, misdirection and so forth, but my hope is that I might discover some small nugget of information that we might find valuable.

Frankly, it's only because there is so little need for me at my uncles' business at the moment that I am even busying myself with this research, but I must occupy my mind somehow.