Who else has witnessed?

This is stage magic, an illusion, chris angel style, no actual magic involved.

And Criss angel yanked a woman in half in a park bench. Either which way, I watched it happen right in front of me. No slight of hand. No nothing. I believe he came to a crossroads at some point and made a deal with the wrong person.

He could have been using a plant in the audience for the $20, someone he knew would have had money in a specific location. For the lighter, he could have latex appendages concealing a rigging that would emit a spark upon pressure in a certain location. These are easily concealed with fake skin and proper placement.

There's all kinds of ways to do these things now.

Anyone who does magic as part of a performance or even just calls themselves a magician is just a master of illusion, I assure you. Stage magicians seek to emulate magic, but the tricks they perform could never work without their skills and props since magic is rarely so physical and predictable to be used in such a fashion. Even if it were, it would still require such a huge amount of effort that the result would hardly be worth it.

On the VERY off chance this man wasn't pulling off an illusion, I suggest avoiding him. Anyone with enough magical skill to light a cigarette in public with so casually is way out of your league and ours too. If you tried to confront him, it's quite unlikely that your meeting would go well even if he decided you were worth his time.

How does criss angel go 300 freakin feet in the air

Cris Angel does wonderful stage magic/illusions. But it is all set up, with various people he hires and trains. Even the hovering over the hotel that looks like a pyramid was great. But its fake, really. He has many years of training for these things. But its not magick as we are learning and doing. Criss is so talented that he got a 10 year contract with the Luxor hotel to perform his act. But its an act, just illusions.

Sorry to disappoint but that was an illusion. People who are expert in that knows where to hid there items so it won't be discovered easily.

i have seen this once before. but the man that showed me started a bond fire with it and he later explained it was his chakra that he (with many years of practice) controlled and willed it to happen. if that helps any

I have personally known a few professional stage magicians (no one big), part of the business is misdirection, they direct your attention to where nothing is happening, if they tell you to check their sleeves then there's usually not going to be anything going on there (unless they're really bad at it). If you know what your doing, you can use a person's own expectations to fool them, for example by wearing sparse clothing like a tank top most people would think it to be difficult to conceal anything, but using that misconception is what illusionist do best. Just don't get it mixed up with real magick, illusionist are there to entertain like TV, but all it is is skilled manipulation of your perception using basic psychology, props, and a lot of skill (though there are simple trick that anyone can learn, most of the big stuff and some of the small stuff require a lot of practice to pull off without making mistakes or giving the trick away, and some of the big tricks can be very dangerous if you make a mistake)

I find it moderately disturbing that this discussion needs to be had. Indeed, I thought we as a society (the world in general) had evolved somewhat beyond believing that stage tricks were real.

Ah well.

That being the case, I've got snake oil, land, a bridge... whatever you believe to be most valuable.