Old but Gold

This topic has been around for deca­des and many times you will hear that expres­sion ‘old but gold’. Most of the times there is the recom­men­da­tion to ‘just dig into the old lite­ra­ture’, because it is there where you will find the hid­den treasures.

That may well be right, but the pro­blem is where exactly start to ‘dig’. There are thou­sands of thou­sands of books, maga­zi­nes and book­lets to choose from. So, where to start?

I will now explain the way I tack­led this pro­blem. Keep in mind that these are only my per­so­nal thoughts and it is my way to go, based on the expe­ri­en­ces I had. They might be useful for other per­sons as well.

Truth is, that you will end up sear­ching and sear­ching, fin­ding not too much really worth your time and energy, because you will get lost and buried under­neath the amount of mate­rial you find. Most of the time the ‘rese­arch’ is not­hing more than an inte­res­t­ing (but time con­sum­ing) read. The point is that you have to know exactly where to look and which aut­hors are interesting.

Luckily, in these times we have such great help from our com­pu­ters. Ever­yone with a comp has an inva­luable tools at his hands and can build up a per­so­nal library or archive. The most important point is to have or build a sys­tem that makes sure you find what you want.

The majo­rity of the rele­vant lite­ra­ture these days is available in PDF for­mat which are inde­xed. You can easily search for a cer­tain topic and the comp will bring up all the cor­re­spon­ding PDFs, if you have the right soft­ware to do this. The advan­tage of the elec­tro­nic books and maga­zi­nes is the fact that you don’t have to store the huge amount of phy­si­cal books in your home. In the case of the maga­zi­nes and peri­odi­cals this can be massive.

In my case, I built my archive around the soft­ware DEVON­think, which is available for almost all plat­forms. I am aware that the pro ver­sion (in which an OCR module is incor­po­ra­ted) is not that cheap, but on the long haul it pays back. Once you start working with that soft­ware and put­ting in one PDF after the other, you will be ama­zed how effi­ci­ent and quick your rese­ar­ches will be. Adding new books to it is a breeze and the index­ing is done automatically.

Now for the sources. In order to com­pile a per­so­nal working library, you’ll have to some­where get the PDFs. Luckily, there are per­sons who have done that work for years alre­ady. There are peo­ple like Denis Behr that have built a com­pre­hen­sive data­base for sear­ching for many years. Or there are peo­ple like Chriss Wass­hu­ber, whose www.lybrary.com has estab­lished its­elf as one of the num­ber one places to go, if you search ebooks and PDFs on magic. Wasshuber’s coll­ec­tion is vast and will make you happy for many years. So I sug­gest you start there.

How to know what to search for
The main pro­blem is to know where to start and what to search for. Many times peo­ple ask me for a sort of ‘list’ with all the sources where the goo­dies are hid­den. The pro­blem is, that this list would be enorm­ous and would­n’t make too much sense. Many dream of having such a list, going through the books and maga­zi­nes men­tio­ned there and then have the holy grail. Bes­i­des, that task would take years.

The reason for this demand is usually that the magi­cian is only see­king for some­thing ’new’ (even if this means it is actually old, but unknown to the others). He wants some stuff to show to the others that appears to be ’new’ and fresh. But that is not the right approach. It is like going onto the ocean for fishing, but not kno­wing which fish one wants and where. It is end­less and on the long run frus­t­ra­ting, lea­ding to more or less nothing.

The more effi­ci­ent way is to focus on your cur­rent magi­cal pro­blem. You will have to know exactly what you want and what your pro­blem is. Focus­sing is para­mount. If you don’t, you will get lost in the ocean of infor­ma­tion available (and it is an abyss). If you take a maga­zine like Genii, which spans over forty years, then you can ima­gine the amount of infor­ma­tion that is con­tai­ned in there. But there is no com­pu­ter soft­ware that is able to pick the ‘gold dust’ out for you. You will have to do it yours­elf. That is the reason why you should have a plan of what to look for.

The thing I rea­li­sed over the years is that the amount of ‘addi­tio­nal’ infor­ma­tion, that is pro­du­ced in rese­ar­ching a cer­tain topic is vast. If you search out for ‘color chan­ging silk’, for exam­ple, you will be sur­pri­sed of how much addi­tio­nal stuff is emer­ging! Stuff you did­n’t think of when you star­ted your initial search. To keep track of that addi­tio­nal stuff alone is a monu­men­tal task.

The secret in buil­ding such a library is to keep it small and hum­ble in the begin­ning and (maybe more important) to early start spe­cia­li­sing. It makes no sense to dive into illu­sion plan sys­tems and stage illu­si­ons, when your pri­mary inte­rest is in the newest varia­tion of the ‘matrix’ effect. So focus on the range of magic that is important to you. From there on, start to add stuff.

Here now a few ‘beginner’s recom­men­da­ti­ons’. This little list is by no means com­plete or pre­tends to be, but it is a wort­hwhile start­ing point for someone who quickly and effi­ci­ently wants to build a solid per­so­nal library. I per­so­nally would sug­gest you start right out with the maga­zi­nes. The reason is that mostly in the maga­zi­nes there are reviews and recom­men­da­ti­ons of good books and hints for where some nug­gets are hid­den. So, by rea­ding carefully through the good maga­zi­nes, you will get a lot of infor­ma­tion on the books, too. Ano­ther point is that so many tricks, which are repu­blished in a book, at first appeared in a maga­zine. Many times it is sim­ply not neces­sary to have the book, because much of it’s con­tent was published alre­ady in the mags.

A sel­ec­tion of maga­zi­nes for the start
GENII
The Lin­king Ring
M.U.M.
ABRACADABRA
MAGIC magazine
MAGIGRAM
CLUB 71
PABULAR
OPUS
SPELLBINDER
Pallbearer’s Review
EPILOGUE
THE GEN
Chap’s Scrapbook
Cen­ter tear
JINX
SPHINX
KABBALA
Magic Circular
Hugard’s Magic Monthly
APOCALYPSE
Richard’s Almanac
Magi­cal Arts Journal
Arcane
Pentagram
New Pentagram
Stanyon’s Magic
The New Phoenix
The Tops
MAGICK

As you can see, this little sel­ec­tion alone is a mas­sive amount of work! But when you take the time to index all this, you will have a VERY good start­ing point for your archive. If ever­y­thing is text-index­ing ready, the search will be quick and effi­ci­ent. You will be sur­pri­sed how ‘crea­tive’ you are and what ama­zing mate­rial is wai­ting for you.