The Girl with Magic Fingers
She is just 17-years-old but has powers to bring life to inanimate objects.
In an article titled “The Girl with Magic Fingers,” Aarthi Mangala JM is profiled on The New Indian Express today.
“A small figurine of a boy, legs and arms stick-thin and spread out, rest in peace in magician Aarthi Mangala JM’s humid hands. She gently whooshes twice over them and the figure, as if life is induced into it, rises slowly.”
Like most magicians in India, the young magician is quick to point out her work is based on science and not black magic.
“Science is definitely the basis for all magic,” she told the paper. Her power is not maayajalam, an integral part of religion, but applied science.
We cannot disagree with her belief that “‘magic is not about tricking people. It’s about entertaining them with the wonders of science. ‘And it’s not just that also. Everything needs a purpose. My tricks are worth the time spent on it only if there is a theme or message that they convey.’”
And take it from us — or don’t — she is good!
If you don’t trust our judgment — and that is usually a smart move — you can see for yourself by checking out the YouTube video of a recent show. It really is very good.
Aarthi is proud of her involvement with magic so far. But how did she get hooked? At five, she needed to present something, anything, for a school cultural event and was frustrated. Her father hooked her up with a magician friend, she learned a few effects, performed them, received applause and adulation, and voila.
“The applause I got was infectious. That still drives me to learn more, and I have worked under over a dozen magicians across the country,” she said. It is clear from the videos that she loves the audience and the feeling is apparently mutual. We are sure she’ll be a big name in magic very soon.
She has been a darling of the media for a while. If we are not mistaken, there was a very nice article in The Hindu from her younger days — back in 2005.
In fact, way back in the heyday of Inside Magic, we noted that the then very young Aarthi Mangala received The National Child Award for Exceptional Achievement for 2003 in the field of magic.
Eventually, Aarthi would like to use her magic skills to help healing in a very real sense.
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Categories: Latest Magic News, Magic of India, Magician Feature Tags: Aarthi Mangala, India, NGO, Youth Magic
Roberto Giobbi’s Five Volumes of Great Stuff!
We were first exposed to Roberto Giobbi’s Card College back when we ran a small magic business.
We considered carrying the entire series for sale but even at wholesale, the investment was more than we could swing.
Since we were working on a cash-only basis, we could not afford having expensive inventory on hand.
We bought three of copies of Card College Volume One and sold every one within five days.
The quick sale and high demand actually caused us to think.
We decided to read Card College Volume One. That mean we had to take it off the shelf and buy it. We are cheap but apparently more curious than cheap.
We were amazed by Mr. Giobbi’s attention to detail and his innovative epistemological approach. His method of teaching was so effective that we even learned from the book. Our ability to learn totally new sleights ended at around 18 years of age.
(Sure, maybe you kept learning new knuckle-busting moves throughout life, but we didn’t. Agreed, that makes us terrible and not worthy of writing a Magic News Site so sue us).
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Categories: Magic Book Review, Magic News, Magic of Australia, Magic of India Tags: Card College, Magic Review, Magic Secrets
Oops! Not Dr. Alexander but Tim and Sue-Anne
We were going to blame it on a typo but knew we would be caught out. How can someone mean to type “Tim Ellis and Sue-Anne Webster” but instead type “Dr. Alexander”?
In yesterday’s award-winning article about India television and Dr. Alexander, we did not do our fact checking.
We wrote, with our typical aplomb:
We hear that Dr. Alexander – Guiness World Record Holder for the the Longest Magic Show – will perform on the series.
Yes, Dr. Alexander will appear on the series but he is not the Guiness World Record Holder for the Longest Magic Show.
That honor rightfully belongs to Inside Magic Favorites Tim Ellis and Sue-Anne Webster.
Even as we typed the Dr. Alexander story, we seemed to remember reading some where about an attempt at the Guiness World Record for Longest Show being performed by Tim Ellis and Sue-Anne Webster.
Maybe it was on one of those message boards or a mailing list, we thought.
We could not remember where we read that Tim Ellis and Sue-Anne Webster held the Guiness World Record and, in fact, had beaten Dr. Alexander’s own record.
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Categories: Latest Magic News, Magic News, Magic of India Tags: Corrections, Inside Magic Favorite, Tim Ellis and Sue-Anne Webster