Magic & Conjuring: page 11

This hard-to-find title contains a wealth of dealer-quality club and stage magic, mentalism, and more for you to perform and enjoy. Here's a book from 1935 that, until now, has been out of print and jealously hoarded by collectors. It's filled with entertaining magic for close-up, club and stage. Clearly explained and well-illustrated, this goldmine of magic contains effects that will entertain as well today, as they did back when this book was originally released.

Divided into chapters, you'll find clever magic themed for Stage and Club, Comedy, Mentalism, and Card Effects. And only in this...

Life and adventure on the prairies, mountains, and Pacific coast.

Beyond the Mississippi is a travel log of Albert Richardson from a few years before and after the American Civil War. As the title suggests, he traveled west of the Mississippi through states and territories such as Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Oregon, California, Nevada, etc. He describes nature, people, politics, and commerce. It includes exciting adventures as well as fairly dry facts such as how many bushels of grain a particular area produces. Overall it is quite readable and the...

A massive collection of information with a huge amount of beautiful illustrations mostly compiled from the pages of Scientific American magazine. The introduction is by Henry Ridgely Evans.

During the 1890s, Scientific American magazine published detailed explanations of magic illusions. The informant for the magazine was no other than William E. Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, who at that time was the stage manager for Harry Kellar. Kellar was upset once he found out that he had a mole in his company who would feed the descriptions of some of his most popular illusions to the magazine, including the rope tie that formed the basis of his Spirit...

A reel is a tool which enables many surprising effects: Cards will rise, silks will come to life, small items will vanish, and more.

Albenice reveals his famous Serpent Silk, wherein a scarf, twisted rope fashion and tied in a knot visibly unties itself. More than 25 different effects are described, including penetrations, color changes, knot effects, and much more.

Also in the Addenda will be found the complete manuscript of "The Penetrable Silk" by Spalding, which was originally published in The Sphinx in the form of a series of articles. Spalding independently developed a whole series of penetration...

An obscure masterpiece in the world of locked room mysteries with a meticulously planned-out crime that will delight the discerning detective story fan.

The original inside flap advert reads:

Three sweet effects that pack small but play big.

Trick Tac is a simple routine in nature that packs a big punch. You introduce a packet of tictacs, then you ask the spectator to pour some of the mints out into their open hand but restrict how many they take from your view. What ever they do, they MUST NOT allow you to see in their hand. The spectator keeps this in mind and keeps every single tictac they have taken in a tight fist. However, you are able to tell them EXACTLY how many they have in there down to the last mint!

• No gimmicks are used what so ever.
• Get the right answer 100%...

An offbeat effect, the head of a stick man that's drawn on a signed business card moves across the paper to another location. Effects where a drawing changes are always crowd pleasers. This one requires a flame from a cigarette lighter.

The principle, which was entirely new to me, is ingenious and allows you to create all kinds of variations. The underlying principle essentially allows you to vanish a drawing or piece of drawing at will. You can even draw in several colors. I already have a few ideas that I will explore. You will need an item that is readily available in any stationary shop...

Borrow a bill, borrow a pen, fold the bill in half and shove the pen right through the center of the bill and all the way through. Miraculously the bill, after folded open is completely unharmed. No hole can be found.

• No gimmicks of any kind
• Everything is borrowed and everything can be returned right after
• Completely impromptu
• Extremely visual

You take or borrow a playing card and tear out two frames. Then in full view you link and unlink the the two card rings. This is the cleanest and most visual card linking I have seen.

• card can be examined at the beginning and end
• frames can be signed

The final wave is a very visual card routine. It requires what is typically called a 'bastard hard move'. I can therefore only recommend this effect to the hard core card experts who are willing to put the necessary work into this move.

Of course, if you like the effect you can exchange the difficult move with other easier moves, but it will be hard to achieve the same clean and direct performance without it.

Jumper is a face up transposition of a card from one packet to another packet without the use of any gimmick cards. This is a very visual effect and another stunning creation by Alan Rorrison.

1st edition 2009; 12 minutes

This is Alan Rorrison's semi-sarcastic reply to the dreaded request: "Can you pull a rabbit out of a hat?" This question has plagued close-up magicians for decades. Suffer no more. This effect is the appropriate answer and will silence your pesky spectators.

The effect is lovely. Get a card selected and signed (a truly free selection - no force), draw a top hat on it and have rabbit appear in it. Then you use a rubber band as lasso to catch the rabbit.

1st edition 2009; runtime: 16min

This is incredible. Technology enabled magic at its best. You will read this and say: "No way, impossible, how can that be?" This effect creates the illusion that you hypnotize someone to forget their MSN live password! They will not be able to login until you want them to - while they sit at their computer potentially half way around the world from you. No gimmicks no kidding. You will control if they can login or not. It's the effect that has secured Alan more bookings via online communication than any other effect.

Effect:

You offer a small display of hypnotism over Windows Live. You...

This is Alan Rorrison's solution to the Hofzinser Ace Problem.

A spectator freely chooses any card and signs it. The card is put face down between the two Jokers and these three cards (Jokers and spectator selection) are tabled. Then the spectator or another spectator selects four random cards from the face down spread. Magically the four chosen cards are the four aces. The ace with the same color as the spectator's card vanishes and reappears between the Jokers. The signed spectator selection is now found among the three remaining aces.

Alan has engineered his method to not require any difficult...

This is a beautiful ring-card linking effect.

Spectator freely chooses a card which he signs. Performer hole punches the signed card and magically attaches and then magically removes a ring. The hole punched card can be handed out for inspection.

• Easy and cheap to make
• Extremely simple to do
• Resets instantly
• Use a free selection or thought of card
• The linked item is borrowed
• Everything is examinable
• You end completely clean

A black mark drawn on the back of an incorrect card transforms it into the correct card which was selected earlier by the spectator.

For example, the spectator selects the 3 of Hearts. The magician finds a card but it is the 3 of Diamonds. He draws a black mark on the back of the card. The mark penetrates the card and shows up on the front with the correct suit: Hearts.

runtime: 13min 12s

Borrow a set of keys. Break off the tip of a key clearly showing the broken key still on the key ring. Then mend the key and return all keys in perfect condition back to the spectator.

This is a very visual quick effect to impress your audience and set the right mood for more miracles to come.

runtime: 6min 35s

This is a neat card and coin to pocket effect.

Have a spectator grab a coin and sign it on both sides. You vanish it, or as Alan likes to say 'make it invisible'. Have a spectator select a card, and also the card vanishes while rubbing it on the leg.

Both card and coin magically traveled to your pocket. However, the unbelievable miracle is that the signed coin is actually inside the spectator selected card. The card has to be peeled open like an in-flight envelope to get to the coin.

Alan teaches every detail. A unique and unforgettable miracle.

runtime: 19min 34s

Have a spectator take out a coin and have him sign it. Show an empty card case and drop the signed coin into it. The card case is closed and put on the spectators stretched out hand. Then you bring out a bottle cap or take one that is lying around and have it signed as well. The bottle cap is lying on the table. You take the card case held on the tips of your fingers - to make clear that no sleight of hand is possible - and tap the bottle cap. The bottle cap instantaneously transforms into the signed coin.

The transformation is incredibly visual and happens right in front of the spectators...

A lovely card stretching routine - very simple to do, because a little something does most of the work for you.

Have a card selected (totally free choice) and draw a happy stick figure on the back of the card. The spectator can even sign the back, too. Then you place the card back on the top of the back and add another card on top of it - the stretch box. You now stretch the card with the signature clearly showing. At the end, simply square up table the top card, the stretch box, and hand out the selected with the stick figure as a souvenir.

This is very simple, no difficult sleights,...

This is a really clever visual effect. I love it.

Present a 'mint sheet' (a piece of aluminum foil). Borrow a coin and press the coin into the mint sheet. The impression looks just like the coin. But of course it is just an impression not a real coin - or is it? Hand the coin with which you created the impression back to the spectator. You only have the aluminum foil with the coin impression. With your thumb you squeeze and pull the impression of the mint sheet and create a new coin. The impression has transformed into a real coin. You do the same with the other side of the coin to 'mint'...

"The easiest and most portable book test to date!" - Erik Jansson

The iPhone has loads of apps designed to do magic in the app store but there is one problem. None of them really are organic. As soon as you performed one of these effects with the phone everyone screams: "Its an app! Very clever but its an app". So here is one of the most organic apps on the market.

You show the spectator an ebook on your phone and run through how it works (scrolling etc,) for them... You let them see that every single page is different before you have a page randomly selected. You hold the phone...

You ask the spectator to name any card that they like. No force is involved and it truly is a completely free choice. You then hand them your phone which has the Google search engine on the screen ready for the magic to happen. you ask them to type "what is my card?" or something similar into Google and hit the "Google search" button.

Now watch as their face drops. Google has not only told them what card they freely thought off but it has also brought up a full page full of search results linked to the card. They can even go into the images section and be greeted with pages of image results...

"I could spend a lotto time pounding out the puns but I won't. Look at that visual, pure magic. Add to cart." - Ben Williams

"The thing I love about Instant Lotto is how visual it is. If you could instantly cash in one of those scratch cards by magic, this is exactly how it would look. Just buy it!" - Dee Christopher

"Instant Lotto is an incredible piece of magic that in real life looks like CGI. Alan has used his experience once again to create one of the most stunning and simple pieces of magic with an everyday object." - Mathew Parrot

"It looks fantastic and made my eyes pop! Very nice Mr Rorrison."...