NEW YORK—Ricky Smith remembers vividly his first day at work. His new boss told him to keep his bag packed.
"I should probably tell you that tomorrow we are flying to Florida," his boss said. "I am going to shoot David."
"David" was the prominent magician David Blaine and Mr. Smith's first assignment was to photograph him doing the famous "bullet catch." His boss was going to pull the trigger. (click below to read more)
Mr. Smith works at a library full of magic secrets: The Conjuring Arts Research Center, located a few blocks from the Empire State Building. The archive has over 15,000 books, plus manuscripts and letters serving magicians, historians and screenwriters. The documentation is all created by magicians for magicians.
The magic library has taken on the sometimes dueling missions of preserving the art and making it more accessible—while being entrusted with mysteries magicians have guarded for centuries.
The center doesn't allow browsers, but members of the public with specific interests can make appointments to seek out volumes such as "Indian Rope Trick" or "Mnemonica" (for memorizing cards).
"It's extremely difficult for me to tell you the secret of anything," says Bill Kalush, 47 years old, founder of the center. "Real secrets are psychological and deep. To take a simple secret and perform it in a way that looks like magic is extremely difficult." He offers as an analogy: "This is a scalpel. See how sharp it is? That's how to do surgery."
The library is a warren of rooms with towering bookshelves and velvet drapes. Labels mark sections on such topics as mentalism, ventriloquism, juggling, hypnosis, escapology, sleight-of-hand and cheating at gambling.
Antique tables and chairs fill the rest of the space, giving readers more room to spread out what they are studying than to turn around. Artifacts such as a pair of Harry Houdini's handcuffs lie in glass cases. Behind a 7-foot-tall vintage poster of "The White Mahatma" is a hidden door to rooms including the small storage room where Mr. Smith now lives.
"The magician who lives in the closet called me a Muggle," says head librarian Jen Spota, after her first day of work two years ago. She says the "Harry Potter" references abound whenever she tells friends she works in a magical library.
It is the kind of place where, one recent day, when cupcakes were served to celebrate a birthday, candles weren't blown out. Instead, they were extinguished with a hand clap.
Mr. Kalush's prized page includes the passage in which a pilgrim recounts a story about a magician conjuring at a party. Other treasures include rare Italian pamphlets from the mid-1500s sold by street magicians, and science and math books revealing magical secrets—the kind made even more rare by those who burned books they saw as witchcraft.
Mr. Kalush, a specialist in sleight-of-hand with cards, was introduced to magic by his father. After college, he founded a produce business and began seriously collecting magic books. They began to multiply, so in 2003 he founded the nonprofit library. It now has six on staff, plus interns and volunteers, many of whom are magicians.
One of its largest projects is the digitization of magicians' personal papers, including letters collected over the years and trade journals for the library's online database. It's called "Ask Alexander" after a poster of a turban-wearing stage mentalist. Members pay up to $500 a year for access. Mr. Kalush also sells services and products for magicians, such as custom-made decks of cards.
The collection makes other magicians both envious and grateful, including illusionist David Copperfield, also a well-known collector. "We each have books we'd love to have in each other's libraries. But he has made his material accessible for all time. It's inspiring for someone like me," he says.
Mr. Copperfield, known for such feats as making the Statue of Liberty disappear, says Mr. Kalush is uniquely committed to preservation, perhaps the only private collector with a team of librarians and archivists. "He's made arcane and secretive knowledge that's been buried throughout time available to the people who need it," he says. "It's an enormous gift for the history of magic."
Teller—of the performing duo Penn and Teller—says magical libraries have previously been "impenetrable" but the center's online database helped him find in 30 seconds a reference book he had been unable to track down over decades. "It took my breath away," he says. He wouldn't reveal what he was seeking. Ricky Jay, a sleight-of-hand expert, says he appreciates the translator Mr. Kalush employs, which opens up secrets from magicians all over the world.
Mr. Blaine—who has been buried alive, encased in ice and submerged underwater—says Mr. Kalush was supportive when he was an up-and-comer on the New York magical scene. He recalls their first encounter in 1991, at a since-closed deli where magicians used to meet and perform for one another.
"When Bill walked in, he did some very underground card moves. There were probably 80 magicians there and everybody went nuts. I basically wouldn't let him leave until I cornered him and made him show me, again and again.''
Mr. Blaine worked on the trick "furiously," he says, eventually winning Mr. Kalush's trust and friendship.
It was put to the test in Florida, five years ago, when they agreed to do the bullet catch for a TV show. After hours of preparation—including a practice shot that knocked a metal cup out of Mr. Blaine's fingers—the final checks were made. Mr. Blaine put the cup in his mouth and the trigger was drawn.
Cheers and whoops erupted from the film crew, and the relieved Mr. Smith, as Mr. Blaine pulled out the cup and dumped the hot shrapnel into his palm.
Mr. Blaine says he knew Mr. Kalush was the go-to guy for the bullet catch because once he saw him take a BB gun and repetitively shoot a bottle that no one else could hit. He knew Mr. Kalush wouldn't take the shot if he thought anything could go wrong. "He's one of the people I trust more than anyone in the world."
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