Module 5- Part 1: “There’s always another secret…”
Benji
“There’s always another secret…”
I’m an avid reader, and one of my all-time favorite series is the ‘Mistborn trilogy’ by an author named Brandon Sanderson.
Here’s why:
The first book in this trilogy is a mind-expanding piece of work that leads you from one mystery to another, all of it coming to a head in a sweeping crescendo.
It’s a reallyyyyyy good book.
In fact, the first time I read it, I figured it was so good that there was no way he could ‘top’ it in the next book. In addition, it felt like all the plot points had been nice and neatly ‘wrapped up’ and there was nothing left to uncover.
So I stopped reading.
Hindsight is everything, and looking back I can see how crazy my logic was, but at the time it made sense.
Then, earlier this year, I decided to pick it up again and have another crack at it.
Boy oh boy…
If the first book was ‘mind-expanding,’ the next two books in the series took my mind and launched it into space, dropped it from 50,000 feet, and plunged it deep into the center of the earth…
…and my initial judgment that I’d figured out ‘more or less everything’ got stomped so hard into the ground that they met in the middle.
Forgive the vivid metaphor, but I want to make one thing very clear:
I had no idea how much I didn’t know!
In fact, one of the most repeated lines of the series is that “there’s always another mystery…”
And while I heartily recommend this series to anyone that will listen, I figure it’s time we get back to the topic at hand—our memorized deck.
There are a lot of people whose experience with the memorized deck will be an awful lot like me when I read Mistborn the first time round—they have a bit of fun, read a couple of books and decide they now know ‘more or less everything’, and leave it at that.
And like me…they couldn’t be more wrong.
Little do they know that they’ve barely scratched the surface!
See, it’s not about the ‘tricks.’
The memorized deck is so much more than just ‘tricks.’
It’s an entire genre of magic. A philosophy. Heck, a lifestyle.
Look—I know that sounds ‘cutesy,’ but it’s not far from the truth.
And every time I THINK I know a thing or two about the memorized deck, it finds a way to surprise me.
(And for that matter—so do some of the ‘cutting edge’ thinkers with this tool.)
Truth be told, the longer I do this the more I realize that I’M still scratching the surface.
In fact, I’m sure I’ll look back at this in a few years and laugh at how little all of us knew, in comparison to what was out there, waiting.
Which, for me, is a very exciting thing.
In this module I want to do a couple of things:
- Show how the skills we’ve been building can be pieced together to unlock the ‘holy grail’ of card magic
- Show you some of the innovations with the memorized deck made by true trailblazers (that proved to me there’s still so much to discover)
And hopefully, by the end of it, you’ll understand why—when you’re dealing with the memorized deck—there’s ALWAYS another mystery…