Magician Joshua Ng did not think he would turn his passion for magic into a career until COVID-19 changed his plans.

Ng first became interested in magic when he was 16 and saw a friend perform a magic trick. He had expected a classic “pick a card” trick, where his friend would try to find his card, but instead of searching for Ng’s card, the friend just told Ng what card he had selected. The trick intrigued Ng — and became his first step on the path to becoming a magician.

Ng began to learn and practice magic, but he did not view it as a career until he graduated from college during the COVID pandemic.

“Nobody was hiring, so I had to do something to make ends meet,” Ng says. “And while I was doing another job that was not related to my studies, I was practicing magic. And someone noticed it and they said, ‘To be honest, you should just do this professionally.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ So I started doing it professionally.”

Since then, Ng has been practicing magic and honing his craft across California. He eventually became a member of the exclusive Hollywood-based magicians’ club, the Magic Castle, and as Ng puts it, “the rest is history.”

It was not an easy transition. Ng had to learn showbusiness, which involves more than just his skills as a magician. While he understood how to be a showman because he has a background in music, he had to learn how to be a businessman as well.

“I never learned how to negotiate and never learned how to set up my own show,” Ng says. “All the ins and outs of showbusiness — I had never learned that. So I started doing it, and I had to learn very quickly how to do it or else I'd be falling behind in my craft and also in the business side of things.”

Ng says there are a few different ways to learn magic. There is a lot of magic literature, but it tends to be expensive and inaccessible because magicians like to gatekeep their secrets. However, Ng also has a mentor, as well as other friends in the magician community, who help him grow as a magician.

“When you make magician friends, especially here on the West Coast [and] at the Magic Castle, you exchange ideas, and you talk with them, and people talk with one another,” Ng says. “And then you get ideas from those things. Or you go to see a magic show, and you see something that was very inspiring. You want to incorporate it into your show.”

Ng does magic at private events, where he does strolling magic for guests, as well as corporate events, where he incorporates magic into explaining products and company philosophies.

However, his favorite shows have been at the Magic Castle. This year, Ng won the Strolling Magic Showdown at the club in both March and June — a back-to-back win.

“When it comes to my most memorable show that I've done so far, of course it's my performances in the Close-up Gallery in the Magic Castle,” Ng says. “That is probably my most memorable performance, and one of the most biggest achievements in my career.”

However, the highlights of his career are still to come. Ng recently secured a consulting role for famous Vegas magician David Blaine, and he hopes to appear on national television one day to share his magic with an even wider audience.

“I get to be enriched by the craft and to get to know the people in the industry that ultimately make me a person who appreciates a diverse expression of the same arts and in many cases, many different kinds of arts in the future as well,” Ng says. “And the second thing that I really enjoy is actually to bring joy, to bring entertainment to the people, to see their reactions and to see that they're amazed by these things that we do.”

You can check out Ng’s website and his Instagram @hksensation.

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