04/11/2025
Ask anyone to name a famous magician, and chances are, 9 times out of 10, they’ll say Harry Houdini. Why?
Well, the irony is, he wasn’t really a magician. He started out as a magician in circuses and side-show acts, calling himself The King of Cards, but he became really well known as an escapologist. Escapology, whilst closely linked to magic, is its own separate discipline.
Why, then, after over 100 years, is he still known as the World’s Greatest Magician? One of the reasons was that he tapped in to something incredibly profound:
He was a man of small stature, an emigrant from Hungary with a thick accent, an outsider by all accounts. But he took on the big guys - the jailhouses, the police, burying himself alive, escaping from straight jackets, flummoxing the institutions of his day. He was the living embodiment of the everyday little man, fighting the system, fighting to escape the chains of society and the shackles of limitations people would put on him. Fighting to escape death itself.
By tapping into a deeply held psychological principle (we all root for the underdog, right?) Harry Houdini immortalised himself at a time when photographs and moving pictures were becoming prominent, he lodged himself in the psyche of his audiences, so much so that people still know his name 100 years later.
What kind of things are you doing that people remember you for? What psychological principles are you tapping into? How can you be more like the Great Harry Houdini?
Find out more about what we do, why we do it, and what other people say about us at www.agmagicians.com
