I am an academic that has spent much of my career studying how concealing and disclosing come together in statecraft and warcraft.
Now I am turning my attention the performance of secrecy and revelation to another area: magic tricks. In these pages, I want to document how a novice (me!) learns magic. The goal is not to reveal how tricks are done, but relate how the ability to accomplish trickery is learnt. The kinds of questions I want to look at include: What skills and knowledge are required for performing magic? What is concealed and revealed about the practice of magic through different kinds of training instructions? How do magicians define what should and should not be disclosed about their craft?