Magic & Conjuring: page 394

Richard Webster's third volume on cold reading was recorded in May 2004 in New Zealand. It contains more on the subject for professional cold readers and those wishing to learn this interesting and profitable subject. In this volume Richard concentrates on the future and provides sets of readings based on numerology and star signs. Detailed but easy-to-learn readings are given. Richard is almost always cited as being one of the world's most experienced cold readers and has a vast knowledge drawn from his personal experiences as a professional cold reader.

This is a licensed reproduction of...

A fork and a spoon are shown. Someone chooses one leaving you with the spoon (ho, ho!), which you now bend using 'the power of your mind' alone. Actually you do bend it, but by pressing it against your forehead! However, it now visibly straightens (all by itself!) then slowly bends again, whilst held in one hand only, snaps in two and is handed out for immediate examination!

Self-working...nobody does it for you! It is all in the most simple and ingenious gimmick that costs you a penny if you don't already have the right thing somewhere at home.

1st edition 2005; 3 pages.

Way back in 1984 Stephen published a strange looking booklet on the 'Torn and Restored Card' effect called The Torn and Restored Card Book. Three routines formed the content, but the most striking thing about the publication was that the booklet was actually torn in half!

It was still a complete piece of work, but the appearance was that of half a book. It soon sold out, probably due to its novelty value. It was updated and re-printed in 1986 with additional material.

Around that time Stephen's good friend David Britland published a solution to a card-problem of his in his Tearing A Lady in Two manuscript. However, it did...

Edwin Ash was a celebrated medical doctor who practiced and lectured in London. He was published in the Lancet which is to this day the most important and respected peer reviewed medical journal.

As the subtitle 'A Practical Handbook' suggests, this is a work for the practitioner. It covers various methods to induce hypnosis, describes muscular and sensory phenomena, post-hypnotic influence, suggestive therapeutics, and a lot more.

1st edition 1906; PDF 118 pages.

A super visual coins across routine.

The profits from the sales of this routine will go to various organizations that are helping victims of the earthquake in Si Chuan, China. Originally this routine was available for $15, but now Rannie has decided to make it free with any amount of donation. That is why the 'price' of this ebook is set to $1, the minimum donation. We hope that you will donate more than the minimum. To do that you only need to change the quantity in the shopping cart. Say you wanted to donate $15, the original price of the ebook, you would enter 15 as the quantity in the...

This is a wonderful presentational idea for the "Invisible Deck". (If you do not know what the "Invisible Deck" is ask around or visit a dealer. It is a very common prepared deck of cards.)

This routine will require some creativity on your part, but more so on the spectator’s part ... but this is part of the fun. It can really go anywhere and it’s usually just as interesting to the performer as it is for the participant.

1st edition 2008; 3 pages.

Two full-color laminated Visa-type credit cards are shown. As you hold one, and move it in a circle, the image of a silver coin appears at its center, which (incredible as it sounds) you then shake off into reality!

You then explain that it can just as easily be deposited back into your bank-account and removed whenever you want it.

Once you've produced several coins, you can use the two Vortex Cards as covers for your favorite matrix routine. Stephen includes his Vortex-Matrix routine.

This is an optical oddity that you will love and use! Pop the two Vortex Cards in your wallet and...

Three face down cards are show and tabled to one side for the moment. Introducing a regular deck of cards, you have one selected, signed across its face, returned and then lost.

The deck is now set aside, as you show the three cards tabled earlier. Incredibly, all three appear to be the signed selection! Then the cards become shy and refuse to show their faces in public, backing away from everyone (all three cards now have backs on both sides!) Finally, they all return to normal!

This is a brilliant routine and easy to perform. Only three cards are used - apart from those in your deck...

Four cards (you could use jumbos) are shown. They are all the same on the face, but one has flipped face down. They are shown again and a second has flipped face down.

This is repeated until only one remains face up. You now ask if they'd like to 'see' the final card visibly flip face down? They would, but aren't too impressed when you simply remove it, and openly turn it over!

However, when the four cards are dealt face up to the table... they are now all completely different, and match the four freely 'forced' cards that they chose earlier!

This routine is great for mastering the...

The core effect is that you play a game of Poker, using just ten cards, with one other player. They choose which five cards they would like, and you take the rest. Incredible as it sounds... they receive a Full House, whilst you always win with a Royal Flush!

NOTE: please don't confuse Red Hot Poker with the old "ten card poker" routine played with three sets of 'three of a kind' and a single 'odd' card. There you had to make them choose the 'odd' card in order for you to win. The routines here are nothing like that!

As a special related bonus item, Peter Duffie has very kindly allowed me to include...

The world's only examinable B'Wave - Two sets of blue Bicycle backed aces are shown. You table one set face down and have someone name any ace. With the other set behind your back, you manage to reverse their named ace (big deal!) However, you now spread the tabled set and their ace has magically reversed there too!

Next, you hand someone your set of aces and, whilst in their hands, the face of their ace vanishes and the backs of the other three change from blue to red! (They are now examinable!)

Finally, someone picks up the tabled set and, with the cards in their hands, their ace becomes...

These are two articles published in the famous Lancet:

1. Some Experiments in Hypnosis, January 27th 1906.
2. The Induction of Hypnosis, August 25th 1906.

This is an incredible topological curiosity with a playing card and a third!

Four odd shaped pieces, cut from Bicycle playing cards, are tabled. You explain that three of the pieces marry together to form the shape of a complete playing card. The extra piece is only supplied in case of emergencies (i.e. if you lose a piece!) The extra 'emergency' piece is shown to be the same shape as one of the other pieces and is then set aside.

Strangely, although you easily solved the 'apparently' simple jig-saw puzzle, no one else can!

Comes with a bonus routine: Bomb$hell Deluxe.

1st edition...

Three playing cards (or business cards) are shown and then, with herculean strength, you tear out their centers - in order, you explain, to magically link them together.

Once they have been linked, they are then torn apart (to break the chain), then the "hoops" are restored and handed out for immediate examination.

You can make gimmicks in less than five seconds! Now also supplied with a 100% impromptu handling.

1st edition 2005; 4 pages.

You remove from your pocket four sections of a large, full-color, treasure map and jig-saw them together. There are 58 possible locations, and someone is asked to imagine that they have buried all their worldly goods at one of these locations.

You now start to deduce, letter-by-letter, the name of their thought of location. However, way before you have called out all the letters, you stop, pick up the four pieces, stick a label onto one of them and hand it to the spectator face down. He reveals where he mentally buried his things, and discovers that you stuck the label, with an X drawn on...

1. Telepathy in the Third Dimension
5. The Bullwhip Approach
10. Under the Table
13. Split
16. Thought Card in Pocket

Four laminated cards are shown to each bear the image of a coin. (Included are images of cards bearing either 50p coins or Kennedy half-dollars).

They are tabled, one at each corner of your mat or, if strolling, one on each of four up-turned palms. The coins on three of the cards vanish and appear on the fourth card - in true matrix fashion. Then the four images are shaken off the card into reality. This leaves you with four double blanks and four real coins!

If you like, you can now perform your favorite coin-matrix with the 'real' coins using the blank cards as covers.

• easy to perform...

This is an absolutely incredible transposition of a 'winning' lottery ticket (you say that you had three of the numbers drawn), which is isolated in a wallet and a £10.00 note held in your hands!

Believe it or not it's an even faster transposition than the one you saw the Pendragons do on TV with their 'Metamorphosis' sub-trunk illusion. Best of all it's 100% self-working, but looks like incredible sleight-of-hand or real magic.

• automatically resets
• very topical as virtually everyone does the lotto (lottery)
• you can use any country's lotto ticket and currency
• comes with Flash Cash...

Someone shuffles an examined blue backed deck (which also contains four red backers). You take it back and, in seconds, produce the four aces. However, this production results in laughter from your audience, not stunned amazement.

You next explain that you are thinking of a word, and ask them to try and read your mind. They say that they think your word is SOAP. You act astonished and say that it was. You then remove the four red backed cards, seen earlier, and a letter has appeared on the back of each of them. The four letters are S, O, A and P!

The deck can now be examined. Hash-Town-Ding...

With a regular deck, in their own hands, two people each look at a card. They have a 100% free choice of any card. Their cards are lost - you genuinely don't know where they are in the deck!

You now put the cards into your empty pocket then, seconds later produce both selections. The rest of the deck is now removed and you are able to continue with any other card routines that you have mastered.

The instructions detail four presentations - the one above, one performed with a face up deck, one involving four people (ideal for two married couples - to see if they are compatible) and a 100%...

This is the strangest rising card method ever. Why? Because the card that rises is the actual gimmick. Also, the selected card rises and (to amusing patter) its back changes from red to blue. This means that you only have to pocket it, which is logical as its back no longer matches the rest of the cards, and the deck is clean.

• No weights, threads, elastics, springs, electronics, cut-out cards or anything like you've ever seen before!
• Add the gimmicked card to any red backed Bicycle deck!
• Bonus routine: Hallucination Plus
• Bonus routine: Impromptu, Borrowed Rising Cards

Any Card At Any Number - You table a cased deck, then remove a small, thin note-pad from your shirt pocket and ask one person to name any card. Let's assume he says, "The Queen of Spades." You record this on the pad. You next ask a second person to name any number from 1 to 52. Let's assume this person says, "22". You record this too, then pick up the cased deck. You remove the cards and show that they are all different. You hand the deck to one of them, and ask that he deals down to the 22nd card... it's the Queen of Spades!

If you would like to inject a little comedy, once the card and...

A collection of Stephen Tucker's 18 contributions to Al Smith's Abacus magazine.

1st edition 2007; 37 pages.

3. Play It Again Sam
6. Out Of His Dimension
8. Blackpool Blockbuster
10. Imogination
11. Spell My Number
14. Thotdek
15. Lady Luck
17. Done Up Like A Dog’s Dinner
19. Matterix
21. Polygraph Pasteboards
25. Pretty Polygraph
27. The Return
29. Shirning
31. Faro Hate
32. Staid Stacked
33. Utility Poker
34. Utility Poker Utilised
35. Two Keys To Baldpate

• 100% self-working
• instant reset
• everything can be examined at the end

You now turn to face them again and, after suitable concentration, reveal that they are holding the coin in their hand - they are! You then continue...