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Raven : Spreading Magic


I remember when I was a kid watching a David Copperfield magic show, I was mesmerized how he managed to vanish an  elephant surrounded by people holding hands.  My young mind then tried to bring in science and logic into the situation.  When I grew up, I just simply gave up and just simply be awed whenever new magicians come into my field of vision. 

I must say that nowadays, its only the foreign magicians I see doing magic.  As they are the ones visible on youtube or TV.  As for the Filipino magicians, I don't see them actually except when I'm invited to a children's party, complete with pigeons and bunnies and the dreaded top hats and capes.  These was how I viewed local magicians until I came across one guy who showed me that Filipino magicians isn't what I thought them to be.

I was introduced to Raven months before this interview and I was amused when he mentioned that he was a magician.  It's not common that you meet a magician (actually he was the first for me).  I was fascinated with this and eventually I asked him to sit down for this interview.

Raven hails from Moncada, Tarlac, and at a young age he was shown a card trick by this uncle and his interest in magic snowballed from then on.  He was further influenced by David Blaine and Justin Miller.  He also look up to Richard Gutierrez aka Trycks from The Story Circle and Anthony Andres Aka Supremo.  With these guys whom he emulates,  easily Raven's  magic acts  focus on what we call close up magic.  The magic that focus more on card tricks, coins and everyday objects.  Overall, he considers magic as an art, an art about self discovery, and he uses it as a medium to express this art.

Since modern Filipino magic (to differentiate from the children's party acts) was new to me, Raven proceeded to boast that they do have a group.  This group aims to show to everyone that this modern magic exists in the Filipino society.  Raven envisioned the group way back 2010 however it was only in January of 2016 that it came into fruition after meeting with similar minded magicians.  The group was composed then by Raven, Rhey Vayco and Juda De Leon, and called themselves the Paradigm Deceivers.  They patterned it after Justin Miller tagged the magicians as Paradigm Shifters so they just had a play with words to come up with their group name.

Their group name Paradigm Deceivers, Paradigm means insight or perception and deceivers is another eccentric term for magicians.  Joined together, they pursue magic as a way of changing the perception of an individual.

Currently the group is now up to 12 highly skilled individuals and they have different specializations or styles in magic.  And they plan to add more members so if you are reading this and you are an avid fan of magic and would like to do magic, simply send a private message to their FB page.  As long as you have the 3D's, determination, dedication and devotion, they would welcome you in their group.

A sample of Raven's card trick can be seen here.


 For video of this card trick click here