DEVIN Person is a self-proclaimed “wizard” who, for the past six months, has been granting wishes to New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority riders on six different subway lines.

The 32-year-old Greenpoint, Brooklyn resident dons a robe and matching hat for his trips, and people have asked him for new jobs, love and money.

Mr Person said he’s up to about a dozen wishes a week.

Carmen Caceres, a dancer from Kensington, admits she was sceptical when she met him on the G train in April.

“I remember seeing him and wondering if there was a Comic-Con [in town],” Ms Cacares, 31, said.

When she inquired about Mr Person’s get-up, they struck up a casual conversation and he offered to grant her a wish — on one condition.

“Here comes the part where he asks me for money,” Ms Cacares thought.

Instead, Mr Person told the dancer, who wished for a specific audition, to simply do a dance for herself before submitting her tryout application.

That night, Ms Caceres sent in her paperwork, then realised she’d forgotten to spellcheck it. Feeling stressed, she put on music, danced her heart out in her bedroom — then felt compelled to rewrite her application and put more emotion into it.

The next day, she landed the audition.

Although she didn’t get the part, she believes Mr Person helped her “look at the positive and think positive.”

The son of a nuclear-physicist father and a social-worker mother, Mr Person grew up in Westford, Massachusetts.

At 18, he read a profile of comic-book writer Grant Morrison, who, according to Mr Person, used the idea of magic as a form of “self-help psychology.”

After a decade of dabbling in mysticism and a move to New York, he decided to become a wizard — a process that involved a ritual including self-hypnosis.

Soon after that, Mr Person participated in a clinical trial for pigmented villonodular synovitis, a condition he suffers from that causes debilitating joint swelling.

The medication helped but, as a side effect, turned his hair white.

“That was a signal from the universe that I was on the right path,” he said.

When he rides the rails, Mr Person brings along a sign — that says “Talk to the Wizard” — which he posts next to him on the train.

A sort of life coach, he also offers meditations, hypnosis and wizarding sessions that “combine psychology-based mysticism with practical goal-setting.”

The sessions are held at his home office and run about $US150 per hour ($200).

He admits that some subway wishes are impossible. “There’s a difference between a wish and a miracle.”