To Be Or Not To Be A Professional Or An Amateur Magician

An amateur magician is anyone who has a minimum amount of talent, skill and knowledge when it comes to performing magic tricks. He or she may be anyone who knows one magic trick or at least three magic tricks. But basically, a more technical definition of an amateur magician is anyone who does not in any way practice magic as their trade, even if he or she knows four, five, six or more than a number of magic tricks. This is regardless of how good, better or excellent he or she may be in performing flourishes, sleight of hand or optical illusions.

However, there are those amateur magicians who try their very best to expand their current knowledge as well as repertoire and still practice magic as their primary source of income. People who do this are usually called hedge magicians. This is in order to differentiate them from authentic professional magicians who make practicing and performing magic as a trade and make an actual living doing so.

Meanwhile a professional magician is anyone who has a little bit more knowledge and talent compared to an amateur magician. These professional magicians know sufficient magic that makes it enough for them to use it as their primary source of trade and income, as well as not using magic to assist them in a trade other than magic.

So technically, even if a barber performs his job using magic and no matter how many tricks he or she knows and is capable of, that barber is still not considered as a professional magician because his primary trade is cutting hairs and not necessarily being a magician.

Another way to differentiate a professional magician from an amateur is by the way he or she does flourishes. According to the Online Encylopedia of Magic, a flourish is any sleight that is performed for the purpose of entertaining an audience and does not in any way contain any moves that are hidden.

Most sleights that are performed are done so in order to deceive a captive audience and to do something that can not be detected. Meanwhile, a flourish is any trick that is done to draw the audience’s attention to the skill of the magician performing the sleight or flourish.

In contrast the real skill of the magician is performing ‘miracles’ using very skillful sleight of hand, which are never seen or suspected by the audience, no matter how close they may be.

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