Delhi-based “psychological illusionist” Karan Singh has some advice for anyone with an interest in learning magic: try it for two years before you ask anyone to teach you anything. As he told the Hindustan Times, magic takes a lot of time and effort to learn well, so the right move is to do your homework before deciding if you want to pursue it seriously. He suggests three specific tricks that every budding magician should master before seeking out a magical mentor, but also emphasizes that tracking down their secrets is part of the journey. 

Singh also says that it’s helpful to learn kinds of magic that you don’t necessarily plan on performing, to broaden your understanding of what you bring to the world of magic. “Making things disappear is something that’s never excited me, but I learned that,” he explains in the video. “But I don’t regret it in any way, because it’s something that I learned. I learned that’s not where I belong. I learned that my kind of magic has to be away from all of that.”