The Jerxian Approach
/Every year or two, I feel obligated to explain more directly the style of magic I like and that I write about on this site.
New people find this site every day, and not all of them are going to go back and read the thousands of posts in the archive. So it’s not always 100% clear what type of magic I’m advocating here.
I know the time has come to do this when I start getting more frequent emails asking if there’s something potentially manipulative about the my approach, or if I’m blurring the lines a little too much.
Here’s a recent one…
[D]o you ever wrestle with some of the ethical implications of the Jerxian style?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of your work and think your writing is some of the most forward-thinking of this century. I'm aware of your magic philosophy and think it's intent is positive and noble.
I suppose my worry is, when people are less inclined to believe in any reality, presenting magic that purposefully blurs the line between performance and reality might end up leaving some people feeling uncomfortable? Or weirded out in a bad way? I don't know.
It might just be that this is an online/offline divide, where in reality this style comes off as intriguing and wonderful. It might be that I'm from the U.K and that there is a different social temperament in the U.S.
And I'm aware that the whole point of magic is to entertain and get people to question their reality.
I just wonder if any of this crosses your mind when you're thinking about magic.—GR
The broader question in GR’s email was whether, in the current political climate, I have any compunction about a style that intentionally tries to mess with people’s realities.
The simple answer is no, I don’t.
Think of haunted house attractions. Let’s say, broadly, there are three levels to them.
Level 1: The rinky-dink kind you find at county fairs—you sit in a little cart, roll through a dark corridor, and plastic skeletons on strings lurch out at you while a tinny speaker plays spooky organ music.
Level 2: The walk-through haunted attractions that pop up every October in warehouses and cornfields. Live actors in masks jump out from around corners, chainsaw guys chase you to the exit. You’ll get a few real jumps, maybe a scream—but it’s still squarely in the “this is fun” category.
Level 3: Fully immersive experiences—places like McKamey Manor or Blackout—designed not to startle you but to psychologically dismantle you. Where the line between performance and genuine threat is fully blurred and participants frequently can’t finish.
If we map magic onto those levels, where do most tricks fall?
I would say level 1.
The experience has a theme of “magic,” but the participants rarely actually feel it. They look and see cards, or cups and balls, or linking rings and think, “These are magic things. I’m watching a magic performance.”
They might be completely fooled by what they see at this level, but it doesn’t feel “magical” in any meaningful sense. In the same way, the carnival ride isn’t actually “horrific,” it just borrows the language of it.
At Level 2, magic starts to feel less like “tricks.”
This is where people shift from “I don’t know how he did that” to “Wait… what is going on?” The performance frame is still there, but the effect hits hard enough to punch through it. It’s no longer just a puzzle—they start to feel like they’ve seen something that shouldn’t be possible.
Level 2 is brute-force wonder. You got there through sheer impossibility—you overwhelmed the skeptical mind until it had no choice but to feel something.
The only issue is that it usually comes off as you being clever. The underlying story is just, “I’m going to show you something you can’t explain.”
Level 3 is what I’m going for when my material is at its most Jerxian. This is where you take a Level 2 effect and drop it into a context that fits so naturally and seamlessly, that people are pulled toward the fiction as if it were real.
It can be a small fiction: “This crystal has weird powers,” or “This ritual has unusual effects.”
Or a big one: “This thing is haunted.” Or “We’re stuck in a time loop.”
Here’s what makes Level 3 different. At Level 2, they’ve witnessed something with no explanation they can conceive of. At Level 3, you give them one—except the explanation is somehow more impossible than the thing they just saw.
Now they’re stranded between two positions: admit they have no idea what happened, or accept an explanation that goes against their understanding of the world. There’s no comfortable exit—no version of this that lets them sidestep the feelings of wonder, amazement, awe, or mystery.
Level 1: You offer to show them a trick and float a small object between your hands.
They think, Ha, neat. Thread? Some kind of magnet? Hmm.
Level 2: You offer to show them a trick and float a borrowed object from across the room.
They think, Wait—how? That’s my pencil. He’s not even touching it. That’s crazy. Very clever.
Level 3: You borrow their pencil and ask if they’ve heard about the gravitational anomalies people have reported in this neighborhood. You take them to a quiet corner of their house and have them set the pencil down. After a moment, it floats.
They think, Holy shit. How did he…? That was him, right? Oh, don’t be stupid—he does magic. Of course it was him. It’s just a trick. But how? That’s my pencil. There’s no way. Could it be?… no. Stop it, Dave. He didn’t come into your house and reveal some anti-gravity pocket in your attic. Okay… so its a trick.. But maybe it does have something to do with something affecting gravity somehow? Hmmm….
But the questions still remain.
Is this manipulative?
A little. I’m trying to guide people into engaging with magic in a way that’s harder to dismiss. But there’s nothing unfair about that.
Does it make people feel “uncomfortable” or “weirded out”?
Yes and no. Does a deep-tissue massage hurt? Yes. Some people find it intensely painful and would never get a second one. Others find it pleasurable. Others find it painful—and still love it enough to pay $150 an hour for it.
Some people are uncomfortable with even the simplest tricks performed in the most straightforward way. They don’t like being fooled. They would hate my style of magic—but they’d never encounter it. I’m not springing this on strangers at bus stops.
Like the haunted house, people have to opt in. And that matters. It opens them up to being messed with, because it means they want it.
The people who experience the most extreme forms of this kind of magic from me have sought it out. They’ve seen things get progressively stranger and more impossible, and they keep coming back. Can it be disorienting? Yes. But that’s why they like it.
Like the people who want the haunted house that actually rattles them, or the deep-tissue massage that leaves them sore for days—they like the intensity. They don’t just want to be fooled. They’re looking for an experience that, for a moment, feels like stepping into another version of reality—one that’s better, weirder, or more magical.
Traditionally in magic—particularly amateur magic—there were two primary approaches:
1. Try to convince people it’s real.
2. Present it like it’s something completely trivial—something so fundamentally unimportant that you can safely smother it in corny jokes and hokey patter.
My approach is different. I perform a trick with a storyline that contextualizes it, and I present that story as if it's real. Not with winks and jokes and patter. But by talking how I actually talk and reacting how I actually react. I ask myself: "If I really had this weird thing to show someone, how might I do that?"
But because I’ve acclimated them to this style of performance, everyone knows it a trick.
I’m not trying to get them to think it’s real. I’m not even trying to get them to consider it might be real. I’m just presenting it in a way that gives them a chance to forget it’s fake.