I think that’s part of the test – you’re showing you have spent the time to learn something original and perform it to the toughest audience possible. I was petrified to be honest, because you’re doing things for people who not only know what you’re doing, but can do it better than you can. “It was really busy when I went because they had a lecture on. But I was determined to get a shot, so I emailed them late at night from the University Library one evening explaining my situation and what I could do.”

“Unfortunately for me I had no magicians in the family, so I didn’t really know anyone. “In order to get in you need be nominated by two members, so usually people have contacts before they get the nod,” Raven says. The future is with them, because if everybody who practices magic just stopped, there would be no tomorrow.”Īlready immersed in magic by the time he enrolled at the University of Bath to study economics, Raven was desperate to marry his talents with the recognition that one only gains through obtaining membership to the world’s most revered magic society. There are just a handful of people out there that are genuinely interested in making it, so they’re the people I want to reach. “I honestly believe the best way to draw in new magicians is to reach out to them through live shows, like the ones I used to watch at Davenport’s, so they get the chance to see how it all works. It was there, learning from visitors on a regular basis, that the foundations for a career in magic were laid. “I started amassing tricks one by one, I got a little magic book for Christmas, and I gradually got more immersed in it.” Growing more competent throughout his teenage years, Raven secured a job at Davenport’s, a magic shop at Charing Cross underground, during his A-levels. “That started the ball rolling,” he continues. It translates quite literally as “keep your trap shut”.īefore sitting down, Jamie takes me on a tour of the upper and bottom floors, all of which are adorned with hundreds of props and magical artefacts collected over more than a century, including Harry Houdini's handcuffs, and Maurice Fogel's X-rays, which show bullets lodged in his chest and hip, the result of his attempt to catch a bullet in his teeth. On closer inspection it is clearly embellished with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, with the Latin saying Indocilis Privata Loqui inscribed under the headstone. Front and centre of the main hallway is a spiralling staircase, which snakes its way up five floors around a striking floor mosaic. But as I enter through its heavy steel-girded doors to meet Jamie, the structure's masonic architecture is readily apparent.

On approach, the building looks surprisingly discreet, tucked away down an old narrow alley close to Euston station.

But today, Jamie has been granted special dispensation to take me on a tour of its mysterious collections, as he continues to add the final touches to his show. Becoming a household name during his stint on Britain’s Got Talent last year, Raven is well frequented with the Prince of Wales’s magical talents, having viewed the set of cups and balls he performed with on multiple occasions, down in the Circle’s underground museum collection.Īside from its members, few outsiders have ever been permitted to enter the Magic Circle. “He did his audition in the same place as all of our members the handcuffs from his trick are downstairs in the museum.” Indeed, the Prince of Wales is perhaps the best known (yet least associated) member of the exclusive club, having passed his entrance exam in 1975. “Don’t forget that list includes Prince Charles too,” says Jamie Raven, as we meet to discuss his latest show, which for the first time in the society’s history, will take place inside the Circle’s headquarters in north London. Harry Houdini, David Copperfield and the modern television star Dynamo are just some of the more iconic figures to have found a second home behind its walls, hidden among a select crop of magicians who, like them, were chosen on merit and originality. Conjured up by the founding fathers at the turn of the 20 th century, it remains the world’s premier magic society – one which is fiercely private and shrouded in secrecy. For more than a century, the Magic Circle has remained a closed book, its mysterious practices hidden from the outside world.

The magic circle museum london