Magic: What is it Good For?

Kabir Vega Castellanos

HAVANA TIMES — I recently got my hands on a video about a magician known as “Dynamo”, who some consider superior to the super-famous David Copperfield.

I saw him swallow a handkerchief between two beautiful women who looked like models and pull it out from his breastbone. Though there wasn’t any blood or signs of any wound, the effect were fairly unpleasant.

In a different act, he asked two people to hold a piece of cloth at either end and he stood on the outstretched fabric, which didn’t bend under his weight.

At one point, he asked for three mobile phones from the apparently high-class audience. He placed these in the hands of a beautiful young woman, balancing one over the other. One phone disappeared, he made the other vanish and the third was left floating in the air before the awe-struck public.

The most spectacular act was performed out in the street. Dynamo was hanged upside down several meters above the ground, wearing a straitjacket, with a rope tied to a weight wrapped around his neck. I assume a normal person would have been choked to death by this. He managed to wriggle out of the straitjacket and to break the rope with his teeth, breaking free.

Incredible! Marvelous! “How does he do it?” the people there and those watching him on TV were surely asking themselves. I couldn’t help ask myself: what sense is there to any of this?

Today, science itself accepts that human beings use only a small percentage of their brains. Since antiquity, people have developed mental powers through practices that require special training and years of sacrifice, powers that are used for healing, alchemy and even nuclear weapons.

The main risk involved in developing these powers is that one’s ego grows with them. Those who have such powers feel superior to others and that, in and of itself constitute an obstacle to their spiritual development.

It is said Dynamo made a pact with the devil. I personally don’t care if he sold his soul or is simply using optical illusions.

No matter how much people gawk at his acts, no matter how seriously they consider him a god on earth, his show will not bring about any change in their lives. It won’t even inspire them to think, to reflect, or offer them hope.

It isn’t that much different from any box office film with plenty of eye candy which one forgets about after turning off the TV.