Before you read further on, do me a small favor--look at the ceiling. Go on. Do it. I'll wait.

What did you see? Not much?

You may not have seen much-but I will bet that you stopped looking at the page. Welcome to the world of magician's "mis-direction." Milbourne Christopher points out that, misdirection is really a form of direction. Often misdirection is defined as: "Getting the audience to look in the wrong place, at the right time."

To direct a person's attention is commendable - affecting thought patterns is really quite something else. Two writers I would like to emulate - both New Yorkers, historians, world travelers, and voluminous authors, have tackled this subject.

If you look at John Mulholland's (1898-1970) Book of Magic written in 1963 and Christopher's 1977 Magic Book, you will find some similarity of philosophy ­ particularly concerning the vaporous subject of misdirection. Mulholland writes "Always remember that the mind is fooled, not the eyes. The mind believes what is indicated by the senses, but often fills in the blanks when it does not actually see something."

Vincent Gaddis, the man who coined the term, "the Bermuda triangle" wrote in an article titled "The Art of Honest Deception" that both John Mulholland and Milbourne Christopher experienced audiences throwing things at them and shoving them when the audience realized that they had been misdirected. Gaddis reasons that audiences not understanding illusion, and the principles included in illusion, created negative reactions, that were almost primal.

Doug Henning said this is why misdirection works ­ the mind is led on ingeniously, step-by-step to defeat its own logic.

The great Italian magician Slydini always maintained that he could make anything disappear or appear ­ but he had to use misdirection. By using misdirection Slydini felt he could dematerialize an elephant to the audience's perception and I believe him. Harry Kellar, the first world traveling American magician with a large stage show claimed once he had an audience's attention he could march an elephant across the stage without the audience seeing it. Of course, Kellar never offered to actually demonstrate this.

Misdirection involves:

• Psychology and understanding assumptions
  
• Challenging skepticism
  
• Understanding suggestions
  
• Being aware of the semiotic
  emotional affect of color and of black and white

There's a point in my act I enjoy immensely because I really do not know how the audience will respond. A silk handkerchief has been tightly tucked in my outstretched left hand and I say to the volunteer: "Look over there!" while pointing to a far wall or window and boldly making fun of the notion of misdirection.

If they do turn their heads, others laugh at my boldness and the subject's psychological malleability. If they do not respond favorably I say, "Ah, not that easy, huh?" Either way, I win. I've got them. I'm in control. They are either following my directive with action ­ or with rebellion. Regardless-the web of my deceit is upon them. They do not know what is going to happen next and, obviously, I do.

The magician's practice of misdirection is similar to Madison Avenue's advertising campaigns where first a brand is introduced, then modified and later multiplied. Similarly, by introducing a running joke, color, situation or dramatic movement (the repetition of the magic word "abracadabra" during a children's show comes to mind) the magician ­ like the wizards in the advertising industry ­ create a "mindset" that becomes acceptable to follow.

In advertising, this is often done by conditioning the buyer that whatever product they currently use could not be as good as the product the advertiser is selling. In addition, sometimes the buyer is even made to feel guilty or inadequate for using another product. This is misdirection by redirecting or manipulating thoughts.

In fact, the advertising industry adopted a word from the lexicon of the magician: gimmick. In magical parlance, the word indicates an item used to affect a wonder. A hidden spring in a chair might be a "gimmick." In the advertising industry a "gimmick" is something that makes the buyer move closer to a purchase. For instance, a scratch card to smell a perfume in a magazine ad might be considered a "gimmick" to persuade the buyer to purchase that brand of perfume.

Sometimes gimmicks are considered elements of misdirection. When Fu Manchu made a ring pass through another, the whole audience was misdirected by a person being thrown from the balcony of the theatre. The fallen body proved to be a dummy. That was the gimmick to wrest the attention from the penetrating ring on stage.

Misdirection is used in warfare. This is unfortunate ­ as the application is usually directed at populations to support war.

George W. Bush insists Iraq harbored terrorists, held weapons of mass destruction, yet, even the CIA claims absolutely no connection between Iraq and the September 11th attacks on Washington D.C. and New York. The President has also labeled Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda the perpetrators of those acts of mass destruction. Yet there has been no proof offered to the public. This is not to say that there is no proof. It is simply that there has been none offered. And, ostensibly if the government was so quick to place blame on bin Laden, then why wasn't anything done about it to deter the incalculable act of violence?

So ­ after massive build-up of rumor, insinuation and presumption, the Bush administration waves the flag, calls the millions of peace marchers worldwide, on February 15, 2003, "a focus group," and kills thousands of Iraqis without bothering to record, or disseminate the numbers of the dead. Ha! We have all been the victims of the methodology of the magician.

A premise was set. An operation/campaign was put in place. The deception was completed and the hard facts were not referred to ­ only the ideals.

I have often lectured to fellow magicians that fostering the understanding of illusion in terms of world politics is a valuable tool. In the corporate world we clearly see that Enron bilked millions from their investors via illusion ­ there was no product to support the investment. What was the misdirection to complete the illusion? Perhaps the soaring stock that had been inflated dazzled investors' eyes was enough; and resultantly, misdirecting away from the truth of the actual bottom line.

Sometimes knowing the weight of the hammer will dictate how hard one has to swing that hammer. Similarly, the magician aware of misdirection in the media, politics and in daily commerce can measure their punch appropriate to their illusions that have patter appropriate to current events.

If I say to an audience that the CIA let 9/11 happen purposely, then this may anger some in the audience. That amount of reaction may be just the amount of misdirection I need to divert attention from something else. Conversely, if I tell a joke that fails to elicit a laugh, the cover I hoped to achieve through that laugh may not be available for my purposes.

Getting back to the tenets of magic and away from war and corporate scandal we can see that Bush's campaign for war is rather similar to my outstretched hand holding a silk scarf to be vanished and telling the audience "Look (away) over there!" It is the same suggestion of an acceptable course of action.

Some subtler actions in my repertoire produce less laughs and more powerful results. In one Dai Vernon piece of card magic I count four cards into a volunteer's hand. I say, "There are, one, two, three" and then I seemingly interrupt the count and ask, "Could you hold your hand a little higher?" and then I count the final card.

What my volunteer doesn't realize, nor ever would, is that my seeming impromptu question is actually a methodically planned moment. Their simple compliance to a seemingly innocuous question actually deflects their attention from the crucial sleight performed by my left little finger. My harmless question provides the masking for crucial, hidden and very specialized actions. A lovely notion about misdirection is that what appears as insignificant is actually essential; the opposite being largely true, as well.

Often I'll meet audiences who say, "OK ­ I'll only watch your left hand and then I'll see how it's done." This is skepticism ­ an unfortunately aberrant form of self-protection. There is nothing wrong with skeptical inquiry. But there is something limiting about it when it guides one's enjoyment of intellectual or circus arts.

By virtue of the fact that a magician presents himself or herself as a clown performing magical effects (again, not "tricks") they also present a harmless performance where skepticism is unwarranted. The great bar magician Doc Eason repeatedly makes a card appear under a glass that is in full view at all times to the audience. He does this with people nearly surrounding him. With supreme misdirection he accomplishes this repeating illusion.

How does one deal with skeptical scrutination? I simply ignore skeptical behavior; whether it is a child putting his hand in my pocket during a show, or a drunk in a bar saying "Go on, I can't be fooled."

You cannot misdirect someone who will not be directed. That is, unless they do not realize a deception is afoot.

An example: After my college reunion a friend and I asked directions of four classmates to a late-night diner. They said they'd not only give us directions, but also go with us and show us by coming along. It turned out that our four new friends were not re-uniting college students, but professional carjackers that had infiltrated the reunion festivities and were looking for gullible pigeons to pluck.

What happened? One of the thieves lost his nerve and ran out of the car, and my friend Richard (the driver of our rented minivan) and I stood our ground when their leader yelled, "Get out of the car." We played dumb as if we did not believe what was happening ­ and finally we got rid of the would-be thieves that angrily persisted in their self-proclaimed act of "GRAND THEFT AUTO."

As previously mentioned, we did not know a deception was afoot, so we had no reason to "be on the look-out." Or, be directed which was actually their act of misdirection. We thought we were heading to a diner but the people we picked up directed us to an open dock in the middle of the night, only attended by their accomplices.

This relates to the magicians' practice of misdirection because the magician must understand (though life experience and observing the human animal) what's acceptable practice; what is natural; what goes unnoticed as suspicious action; and, what sends up a red flag to the audience's intellect and creates ­ however subtly ­ the feeling "wait a minute, something tricky just happened."

For the mind to be misdirected, it must be engaged. To engage the mind, the intellect must first find magic plausible. Hence an illusion that fails to grab the intellect, but does capture the imagination such as the vanishing of the Statue of Liberty, is the stuff of myths, but poor illusion. Do not mistake Coleridge's famous statement about the "willing suspension of disbelief" with the steps inherent in good misdirection. I mention the aforementioned TV magician and his seeming vanishing of the Statue of Liberty because it belittles the talents genuine magicians must develop, such as the understanding of misdirection.

Something as implausible as vanishing of the Statue of Liberty fails to attract the intellect because the notion is absurd. Equally, when a TV magician supposedly escaped from a building that was about to be destroyed, and promoted his taped special on a talk show, Carl Reiner got a huge laugh at the magician's expense by asking him "Did you make it out alive?" Clearly Reiner's humor makes a salient point about magic: it must be believable; it must engage a sense of the imagination; and this is a hard thing to do in a media-saturated world.

The infectious disease of "celebrity driven magic" is now being practiced by other TV magicians who believe it is all right, even acceptable, to use editing of videotape to bring illusions to their finale. If you show your hand empty, the hand must then become full in an amazing way. It is not fair, or necessary, to the truly talented magician, to "cut away" or edit in another picture of a smiling face or someone looking amazed, and then cut back to the hand being full.

Cutting away from a picture is not misdirection. It is cheap and fake - actually typical TV fare in the early 21st century.

The art of misdirection is a subtle practice of understanding the human animal, and involving this animal in the performance of, "creating illusions agreeably" said John Mulholland, the world's most knowledgeable magician.

Let us, as purveyors of illusion, create mysteries that engender wonder. The magician who creates wonder does their job. Delighting in what the magician is doing is the goal of the magician.

Magicians who antagonize with tricks that are known to the magician but not the audience are merely critics and they do not provide wonder. Magicians who make fun of the notion of magic and deflate wonder should not even be called magicians.

A magician is a sacred mantle ­ not very well upheld by those who don't believe in magic. Misdirection is a tool of the magician to create illusions that create wonder. Celebrity TV magicians miss this point completely. They may read these words and repeat them as their own, but they are lost ­ and they will never be real artists of illusion. The real illusionist makes the audience not care about misdirection or even care how the illusion is brought about.

The stuff of magic is the stuff of metaphysical involvement on a real level. For a moment, an audience is injected with real wonder. It is a precious emotion, hard won and protected by those who possess it. I call this "real magic."

The better mysteries will be brought about by talented magicians and their powers of almost invisible misdirection. This is the true talent of the magician.