MARC KERSTEIN INTERVIEW
Marc is a wizard-behind-curtains magician who got in touch to confess his secret formative interest in hypnosis. We chat about the intersections between magic, mentalism, and hypnosis, and the power of suggestion.
The vast majority of Cosmic Pancakes! readers are, of course, based in Virginia, USA – home of the CIA. We’d like to assure The Men in Black that we have some top-notch subversive and occult content coming up, and that the glory days of hypno-hijinks are soon to return.
The rest of you are probably wondering, though: “Why I am here?!”. Perhaps you’re a confused hypnotherapist, absorbing the blog you’ve been recommended but which you absolutely do not want (but very much need). Alternatively, you’re a magician or mentalist asking why – WHY?! – we keep troubling you with advertising something intangible and ‘off-topic’ in the magazines you read?
Thing is, both audiences have something in common… Hypnotherapists and hypno-seekers are compelled by the feats of Uncle Derren, and other such mentalists and mental magicians. Meanwhile, the gen-pop of magicians and mentalists lack an appreciation, in our humble opinion, of the (historic) role that hypnosis and suggestion play in their art and trade.
When magician Marc Kerstein got in touch in response to the publication of magician-penned hypno-booklet Practical Hypnotism by Ed Wolff to confess his secret formative interest in hypnosis, we felt this the perfect opportunity to unite our secondary audiences…
(Muggles: you won’t know Marc’s name as a magical performer. And, to the more careful Muggle-reader of this blog, we say: indeed. To the magic community: Marc needs no introduction, and we hope this insight into his interest in hypnosis is illuminating.)
We kick off by asking Marc how he acquired Wolff’s book and what piqued his hypnosis interest. “So, I’d call this a fleeting interest, possibly formed a bit by Derren – I think it would have been around that time. [Derren was first broadcast in the UK in 2000.] Maybe I got it from Davenports or Magic by Post, and I thought: “Oh, this is definitely outside of anything I know.” And, being a booklet, I figured it would be digestible compared to a book and would give me a good insight into that world. So, yeah, it was a bit of a fascination.
“Hypnosis is one of those things, isn’t it? ‘How is it working?’ There’s some rumour of the people playing along, or maybe it’s some weird thing that the performer, the hypnotist, is doing, controlling people’s minds and doing certain things. And I’d heard different stories and different things – some of which, on reflection, might not have actually happened – but, at the time, I found it fascinating. So, on a whim, I decided to check out the booklet.”
Marc is representative of precisely the sort of reader Wolff catered to. His circa 14-year-old-self took the ‘complete course’ sales pitch seriously: “I remember it saying that you have to read every word very carefully, because it’s condensed to the point that every word there is necessary. I certainly learned about the concept of suggestion and that it’s not, you know, a ‘force’ coming from you, it’s not some weird superpower or ‘mind control’.”
Marc learned about post-hypnotic suggestions, and the role of persistency and confidence in Wolff’s professed successes. It’s impressive to hear how much he gleaned from such an old, short booklet; Wolff was writing in 1936, and it’s worth remembering that magicians blazed a trail in stripping hypnosis back to the bare essentials of suggestion at a time when psychiatry, psychology, and amateurs alike were enthralled to ‘state’, ‘trance’, and such.
Did Marc ever put the theories in practice? “One of the things Wolff says is that friends and family don’t make good subjects. But, once or twice, when I was a bit more cocky… I had friends who knew I was into magic and stuff, but I don’t think I had any friends who would go: “Oh, Marc can hypnotise me now.” But there was one friend who was keen. I’d told him I was reading the booklet, and he really wanted to be hypnotised. We went through a few little experiments – a weighted finger thing, I think – and eventually I put him ‘under’.
“In hindsight, given how keen he was to be hypnotised, he might just have been playing along. But who knows? I remember thinking at the time that it was a success. And that was it – I don’t think I ever tried it again; I think, at the time, I just felt a bit silly. I felt I was aware of this knowledge and roughly how to do this. But I felt a bit silly doing it. I kind of felt like maybe one day when I’m older and, you know, have a bit more gravitas, I could introduce myself to new people and be, like: “Oh, yeah, actually that’s a thing I do.” ‘Maybe then I’ll do it.’ And it just never came to be. I suppose I was maybe a bit too young, and everyone I knew I just felt wouldn’t really believe me. And I never really revisited it.”
Marc is known for devising magic tricks that require participants to reliably make decisions in particular and precise directions, overtly and covertly. We spend some time speculating as to how his formative interest in hypnosis has impacted his work, and whether harnessing the power of suggestion is a unifying force among the magic elite. I think it’s fair to say that we end up lamenting magic’s perpetually narrowing focus; magic understands and conceptualises itself based on how, say, to produce a dove from one’s ass, all via an endless celebration of Victorian Gentlemen who invented such ‘wonders’. But Wolff’s booklet is one of many such publications that once proliferated amongst magic technology and technique literati, and magic forgets that wisdom creamed from things like Wonder Words is born of hypnosis and suggestion. Indeed, Cosmic Pancakes! laments that the key question that magicians have for Marc is how not to be weird with a mobile phone and that we’re the first to ask him questions on the psychology of suggestion.
Having stoked the fires of Marc’s mind in ways no magicians can match, he has a sudden recollection: it is not Derren who inspired him into hypnosis, but, in fact, his late grandfather.
“My grandad was a heavy smoker before I was born; a very heavy smoker. My mum told me he used to smoke a crazy amount of cigarettes. And my mum as a kid would grab them and throw them away, and they’d have massive arguments. He’d get really angry. But this was around the time they were understanding smoking was really bad for your health. My mum told me he would sit watching TV with his fingers, like [mimes smoking hold]; like his fingers were locked – that’s how much he smoked. He tried everything to give up. And, almost as a last resort, he went to a hypnotist… and he hasn’t smoked to this day.”
Marc revels in this resurfaced memory; in his lifetime, his grandad – who sadly died during the Covid pandemic – never smoked. His grandad was never bothered by other people’s smoke, nor was he nostalgic for the rituals of smoking – all he had was palpable disgust and nausea for smoking. What comes through is that this was real, powerful, and permanent. Marc realises that it was this – not Derren’s TV debut – that drew him to Wolff’s booklet and the power of hypnosis.
After a lot of super secret magic chat (that we’d be killed if we shared), we conclude by asking Marc whether he has any favourite pop-culture hypno-references: films, TV, books that have influenced him on this hypno-path. He doesn’t, but he does pause to reflect on the hypnosis segment in Derren’s latest stage show, Showman. Marc describes what sounds like a masterful piece of unscripted stage hypnosis. (We haven’t seen it yet as our 2020 rescheduling isn’t until October.) We end wondering if and how the next great stage, or street, or whatever, hypnotist might follow in Derren’s footsteps… Magic has excised hypnosis from its references whilst hypnosis long bade farewell to the ‘frivolity’ of magic; Cosmic Pancakes! believes it is time to kiss and make up, and to pursue hypnosis holistically, and above and beyond the two stagnant ponds in which it currently exists.
PS – YOUR HAIR IS FULL OF BEES.