A little bit of magic for the nonbelievers

Saturday June 24, 2023 — New York

Here is a simple spell that you can use in everyday life: for good luck on a journey, burn half a stick of incense at your origin, and the other half at your destination. You may think it’s unnecessary to burn the second half, since you have already made your trip by then, but this is incorrect — luck is not constrained by the linearity of time.

Those of you inclined towards magic can stop reading now. But, the skeptics and nonbelievers are likely saying, this does nothing, it’s superstitious. Here’s something to consider: if you have bad luck on your journey, simply don’t burn the incense on the other end. The spell is exactly the same as before, it has the same effect. You might say it’s not useful since it doesn’t change your luck either way, but I never promised it to be useful, magic frequently is not.

This is sort of a reverse Randi kind of trick — rather than convincing people that magic doesn’t exist by doing something impressive, it’s convincing people that magic does exist by doing something unimpressive.

☙