What’s the Grandiose Glossary of Thaumaturgical Terminology, you ask? Why, it’s a resource aimed primarily at pissing off the Green Latrine posters who think the newbies shouldn’t get even a taste of what any of their discussions are supposed to mean, but secondarily it’s intended to be a valuable resource for new and old magicians alike.
In essence, the GGoTT explains what a 3CM is, that a turtle just means any shell, and that DL can mean down-low OR double lift; depending on whether or not you’re hanging with Copperfield or Blaine. Altogether it’s just over fifty entries currently.
Feel free to comment if you have a suggestion for an addition. Please do, in fact.
- 2CM: Two Card Monte (Fechter’s “Be Honest What Is It?”, 2CM name popularized by David Blaine)
- 3CM: Three Card Monte
- 4DT: Fourth-Dimensional Telepathy by Annemann, with variants by Bob Cassidy and others.
- ACAAN: Any Card At Any Number
- ACR: Ambitious Card Routine
- AMA: Academy of Magical Arts
- ATFUS: Any Time Face-Up Switch by Marlo
- BMC: Blackpool Magic Convention
- CAAN: Card At Any Number
- C/S: Copper/Silver gimmick
- CT: Center Tear
- DB: Double Backer or (much rarer) David Blaine
- DF: Double Facer
- DFB: Digital Force Bag
- DL: Double Lift, which is technically a double turnover (the more you know)
- DPS: Diagonal Palm Shift
- EDC: EveryDay Carry
- FISM: International Federation of Magical Societies (but in French, hence FISM instead of IFMS which is really just so typical of English to sound awful in comparison. Can’t pronounce that shit.)
- GLOMM: Global League Of Magicians and Mentalists1
- Green Latrine, The: A derogatory term referring to The Magic Café.2 (Oval slang.)
- HH: Harry Houdini3
- ID: Invisible Deck (the actual name is the Ultra-Mental Deck, but the Invisible presentation has proven so popular that magicians predictably did the worst possible thing and started calling the product itself by that name too.)
- IBM: International Brotherhood of Magicians
- IT: Invisible Thread
- L&S, L+S: Long and Short
- MC or MCF: Mercury Card Fold
- MMC: Member of the Magic Circle
- MMO: Member of the Magic Oval4
- MOABT: Mother Of All Book Tests5
- NDO: New Deck Order
- NW: Nail Writer
- O&W, O+W: Oil and Water
- OOTW: Out Of This World
- OW: One Way (deck, back, etc)
- P&T, P+T: Penn and Teller ❤️
- Part: As in Participant, derived from and due to the general overuse of “spec”/spectator. You ask the Part to pick a card. The spec watches. (Oval slang, but spread it.)
- PATEO: Pick Any Two, Eliminate One or Point At Two, Eliminate One (same thing either way)
- PK: PsychoKinetic
- Professor, The: Dai Vernon 🙇
- R&S, R+S: Rough and Smooth
- S&S, S+S: Scotch and Soda
- SAM: Society of American Magicians
- SUC: Sight Unseen Case
- SW: Swami Writing, Swami Writer, (rarely) secret writing, (rarely) secret writer
- SWE: Suave Whistling, Electric! Not actually, actually it stands for S.W. Erdnase.6
- T&R, T+R: Torn and Restored
- TC: Top Change
- TL: Triple Lift
- TOD: Tossed Out Deck
- TT: Thumb Tip
- Turtle: Any shell (get it?)
- XCM: eXtreme Card Manipulation (very rare in magic unless you know Brian Tudor, it’s cardistry jargon)
- Known primarily for disallowing all convicted sex offenders from their ranks and curating a useful list of the banned magicians in question. ↩︎
- Green as in the color of the site, and Latrine as in you’ll mostly find piss and shit in there. ↩︎
- If you’re PigCake or Paul Carpenter (NOT our beloved Jack Carpenter, who is the only one that should be trusted with any sort of control), the magician infamous for an AI Biden robocall during the New Hampshire primary who seems weirdly fond of “political circus” stunts with swastikas and blackface, you’re probably more likely to think of “Heil Hitler” than “Harry Houdini”. But we can’t help that. Goodbye with you. ↩︎
- We’re lying, this one doesn’t exist. We call ourselves Ovalites, and the fanbase an Ovulati- sorry, I meant an Ovalation. Anyway, we were just hoping to briefly distract you from your Massively Multiplayer Online game known as “the Café” and/or “the Facebook group ‘Magicians Only’” so you could practice some magic in real life and make some friends or something. ↩︎
- The iconic methodology for creating book test text originated by the guy who groomed and fucked his underage student from public school beforehand and buried it (until the Jerx came a-knockin’) because this was the ’80s baby. The one and only Ted Karmilovich! ↩︎
- What does the S.W. stand for, you may ask? Probably nothing legitimate at all. Long story and we haven’t the time to dilly nor dally. ↩︎