It seems that in the last few years, magicians are becoming more and more popular in France. Interesting…considering that when I moved over to England in 1996, French people were definitely true “sceptics”. A lot of people just couldn’t see the point of magic and didn’t really know how to enjoy it. They were just too “Cartesian”, and didn’t seem to be able to relax enough to appreciate magic. They had to try and work out the tricks, and didn’t see the point of magic so for years. So for years, quite a lot of people in France missed out on a great form of entertainment. For a few minutes, magic takes you into another world, makes you forget about your everyday life and sometimes it takes you back to childhood, a time when we didn’t understand all the things happening around us, a time of true amazement!

So why was it so difficult for French people to enjoy magic? I wonder if our heritage from the French philosopher René Descartes might be to blame for this. Since the 17^th century, the French culture has been heavily influenced by Descartes’ philosophy. In his most famous book “The Discourse on the Method”, he tried to create a set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. The method he uses to achieve this is known as “Methodological Scepticism”. In other words, he rejected anything than could be doubted. With this in mind, I can’t imagine René Descartes would have been a big fan of magic, had there been many magicians around. But as you can imagine magic would have been a dangerous activity at the time, a bit like playing with fire (quite literally!)

Anyway, things have changed a lot in the last 13 years and France has definitely opened up to magic, so much that I am now very much in demand in my home country. I will try to post some interesting stories and information about places where I work in France. I often work in amazing venues! If you are fluent in French you can visit my website: Magicien Close up