Magicians and Their Dirty Tables

Why do magicians always perform on dirty tables?

That’s what someone unfamiliar with the world of magic might wonder, noticing how often close-up magicians “clean the table” of something so small it’s visible only to them—just before moving on with the effect.

This edition was inspired by reading a slim, twenty-page pamphlet from the 1980s. The title isn’t important. It explained an effect—honestly, an overly convoluted and boring one—but its most surprising part was that, in the span of a two-minute routine, the magician was instructed to “wipe dust off the table” four times. (Four!)

Surely no table has ever been that dirty.

By the end of the routine, it’s easy to imagine the audience leaving, puzzled, wondering what on earth the magician kept needing to clean. Or maybe they just agreed that yes, the magician did seem to have a superpower—spotting invisible clutter on the close-up pad.

In close-up magic, especially card magic, the gesture of brushing imaginary dust off the table is often taught as a way to justify certain moves.

Imagine holding the deck in your left hand and a card in your right. If you need to place the card back on top of the deck before proceeding (perhaps so you can then lift two cards as one), it’s often recommended to pretend to clean the table with your right hand—something that requires your right hand to be empty, giving you a reason to momentarily leave the card on top of the deck.

It’s much harder to explain than to picture. But once you start noticing how often magicians perform this gesture, you’ll never see it the same way again. You’ll see dirty tables everywhere.

That card placement example is one of the more common uses. But there are many others, and the gesture is often recommended for misdirection—although, as we’ll see, it might not actually be the best choice.

So are we suggesting you perform on an actually dirty table just so you can clean it for real? Of course not.

The better choice is to use that fleeting moment—the one that’s often spent pretending to “clean the table”—to do something that makes more sense in the context of the routine. Something that doesn’t suggest you’ve got a thing for dusty close-up pads.