If you were learning to be a magician you would have to take an oath, swearing that you won’t share the ‘tricks’ of the trade. Pun completely intended! Before a trained magician shows a new magician the secrets, oath-takers agree that they won’t ever reveal the moves behind the magic to non-magicians. That way, the illusion stays alive, and magicians get a degree of job security. If a song is the property of the musician who sang it, or a book the property of the author who wrote it, then tricks are the property of the magician who came up with them—it all makes sense.
In 1584, the first book about magic tricks, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (sic) was released by Reginald Scot. Long, long before the Internet was around, if you wanted to learn magic, you’d have a difficult time. There weren’t that many books published on the subject following Scot’s book either, as magicians liked to keep their secrets to themselves. If you do manage to find a book on magic now, you’ll have to look at specialized stores. Though many books are published annually these days, and magic books are some of the most published among the performing arts, most major carriers don’t sell them.
Harry Houdini is likely the first name you think of when you try to name a magician. He hailed from Hungary and was actually born Erik Weisz in 1874. During his career, Houdini was buried alive, handcuffed, wound up tight in a straight jacket, sent deep underwater and hanging for his life from a skyscraper.
Pulling a rabbit from a hat is a classic symbol of magic, yet in truth has rarely been a part of any magician's show. By some accounts, the idea of pulling a rabbit from a hat was part of a publicity stunt. Created by a British magician, the effect capitalized on the public's interest in a woman who claimed to have given birth to a litter of rabbits.