Dear Reader,

     Do you know how, in movies, whenever the entire human race is threatened by some cataclysmic world-ending event, everyone puts aside their own ego, politic, and self, in order for the greater good?

     At the risk of appearing overly sappy or optimistic, this is exactly how I feel about the magic community as a whole. Here we are, all strangers, that met one day in the pursuit of creating something that, ostensibly, exists only in our heads. We create weird plots and effects, craft gimmicks that could pass as some otherworldly artifact, play dress up to unending degrees of strange, spend hours staring at our hands in a mirror, all for the purpose of creating a fleeting magical moment in an as-yet-undetermined person’s thoughts. Sometimes our ideas don’t even leave our living rooms: we’re in love with the process as well.

     I think we, those who take a vested interest in magic, belong to an increasingly special, supportive community. Rarely do practitioners of such great disparity in experience or skill share their literal secrets, their life’s work, careful tradecraft, all for the simple goal of sharing what they know to benefit others. This is why I find the magic community to be such a special place, and why I wax poetic about it today. We’ve been around for thousands of years, all for us to arrive at this very moment, and continue to create new, fun, and mesmerizing experiences for those around us. Thank you for being here.

-- J.R.