Magic & Mentalism: page 395

The crime: The Home Secretary Sir James Watson was found shot in the head inside his study which was locked from the inside. There was no apparent way in or out for the murderer to have been able to get into the room to commit the crime, nor a way to escape unnoticed. Further, the housekeeper Mrs. Simmons did not hear any shot which she certainly would have. What is going on here? How was the crime committed and by who?

It will be the task of Superintendent Sinclair from Scotland Yard and his amateur sleuth friend Sylvester Collins, a barrister, to unravel the mystery.

The inside cover...

Crymp is an origami wallet (no gluing or sewing) that you can fold in a matter of a few minutes. With some practice, one can do it in under a minute. The unique feature of the wallet is that it has a closure. A specially designed plastic piece, roughly the size of a credit card, is inserted in such a way that it locks in place so that it cannot fall out or be pulled out during normal usage. It allows a rubber band to be semi-permanently linked to the wallet. This makes opening and closing the wallet very easy because the rubber band can't be lost. One can let go of it and it remains attached...

J.C. Wagner's "Super Closer" is one of the most impressive routines you can do with a deck of cards. Ricky Jay knew this and only was told the workings after Wagner held out for one of Jay's inner secrets.

The deck is shuffled and cut and then divided into four packets. The magician and the spectator shuffle the four packets.

Effect #1: The top cards of each packet are turned over to reveal the four Aces.

Effect #2: The spectator buries the four Aces in the deck. The magician spells each Ace to find all four and, as he does so, four packets are created.

Effect #3: The four Kings are spelled...

David Regal is a television writer and producer (Carbonnaro Effect) by profession, with a background in live comedy. But you likely know his work in magic, either through the tricks he has created like "Sudden Deck", or the books he's authored such as Approaching Magic, or his own performances at the Magic Castle or on video.

• What his process entails for coming up with engaging presentations.
• The difference between inspiration and attendance.
• How television writing informs his magic.
• Why a magic secret is only a beginning.
• Why being original (or not) is a decision.
• The differences...

Christian Cagigal is a highly decorated performer who splits his time between New York and San Francisco. His one-man shows "Now and at the Hour" and "Obscura" (among others) have received critical acclaim. He's a theatre consultant as well as the owner of the "San Francisco Ghost Hunt" walking tour.

• Why he's never fully codified his creative process.
• The restrictions he has had to deal with from the beginning.
• Who inspired him? Where does he discover ideas?
• The elements that pushed him into "implicit magic."
• Why the coolest tricks aren't the best tricks for a show and why magicians...

Whit "Pop" Haydn is a decorated performer at The Magic Castle in Hollywood. His "expatriate con man and medicine show huckster from the early 20th century" character, "Pop", is beloved throughout the world and all its venues, be it festivals, private events or in the past, the streets.

Though he's always been a character, Whit Haydn decided to become a new manifestation of himself named Pop. Listen as I interview Pop and dig into such topics as...

• Is character important?
• The "Pop Haydn" backstory.
• What Billy McComb, one of Pop's mentors, said about character arc.
• Why character can become...

Programmes, ventriloquial dialogues, juggling, cartooning, paper folding, care of animals and birds.

Excerpt from the introduction:

Within these pages, you will find seventeen performance-tested routines picked from my professional repertoire. Some of these I perform in almost every show, others are special items I have performed on television and special shows.

I have been a professional magician for 56 years, having performed in many Spanish-speaking countries like Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Spain. In Spain, I remained for sixteen years and performed hundreds of shows, including national television. I have also been on cruise ships in the Mediterranean several times. ...

A matrix effect with playing cards.

[Also available as an instructional PDF.

You place the Ace, Two, Three and Four of Clubs on the table in a square formation as is typically done with matrix-type effects. You cover two cards with two jumbo cards. One by one all the cards assemble under one jumbo card.

You try to repeat the 'assembly' without the jumbo cards but the regular cards do not move. You turn over three cards and they are seen to be all blank. The other card is the 10 of Clubs, the sum of all the cards!

[Note: Aldo originally included the three necessary blank cards and the two jumbo cards. This download does not include these cards. You will have to supply them yourself.]

1st edition 2010, video 7:47...

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:

Diese Gebrauchsmusteranmeldung hat nur am Rande mit der Zauberkunst zu tun. Günther Dammann hat wahrscheinlich diese Karteizetteltasche für die Arbeit an seinem Buch Zauberkunst und Zauberkünstler entwickelt und sich seine Errungenschaft in 1934 schützen lassen.

Ein Gebrauchsmuster kommt einem Patent nahe. Es hat aber eine kürzere Laufzeit und die Bedingungen ein Gebrauchsmuster anzumelden sind geringer als bei einem Patent. Das Gebrauchsmuster wird daher manchmal auch das 'kleine Patent' genannt.

Erstausgabe 1934; PDF 4 Seiten.

Transform a cap from a Sharpie pen into a sponge ball and back. The gimmick is easy to make, the rest are basic sleight-of-hand maneuvres.

1st edition 2023, video 9:30

This psychological reading allows most anyone to present a convincing demonstration of palmistry, even if they've never read palms before.

Thayer originally sold this Larsen title as a manuscript in their catalog (Item No. 1394). Now once again available in this expanded and updated book edition, the original content has been supplemented with new features to make it even more complete.

Understand, this is not a trick, but a stock reading that you can easily memorize and give to any person without further study. Use it to supplement, dramatically, your usual readings. Or if you're entirely...

For the time this was published, in the middle of the 19th century, these twelve lessons in magic are probably one of the best instructions in conjuring published in the English language, even though the intended reading audience was young folks. Professor Hoffmann's Modern Magic is still a decade into the future.

Henry Hatton, writing here under his real name Patrick Henry Cannon, describes a range of stage and parlor effects including some sleight-of-hand with coins and cards. His description of the pass is by far the best description I have read prior to Erdnase - almost...

In this article from Scribner's Monthly Magazine Henry Hatton, writing under the pseudonym of an 'Ex-Conjurer' explains in detail the two-person code system used by Robert Heller. It consists of five different parts based on different methodologies to make detection by the audience impossible.

1st edition 1880, PDF 10 pages.

In this article from Scribner's Monthly Magazine Henry Hatton, writing under the pseudonym of an 'Ex-Conjurer' explains in words and illustrations the Indian Box Mystery, the Spiritual Bench, the Inexhaustible bottle, including a funny accident that happened with it, and Marabout Mocca as performed by the elder Herrmann.

1st edition 1880, PDF 11 pages.

Table of Contents

• Greetings...
• Linking Rope Routine
• Who Gets The Prize
• The East India Card Trick
• Impromptu (?) Rigid Hank
• Cherchez La Rabbit
• Miracle Necklace
• Mrs. Murphy's Christmas Tree
• Allessandro's Marksmanship Act
• Divine Touch
• Allessandro's Comedy Routine No. 1
• Comedy Magic Routine No. 2.
• Comedy Convention Skit
• Allessandro's Cigarette Routine
• Magic Quickies
• Our Book-Within-A-Book-Feature (Leonard Austin)
  • Triple Transportation
  • No Beer
  • Sands Of Time
  • Production Box
  • Enchanted Cylinder
  • Aladdin’s Lamp
  • Silk Color Change
  • Novel Card Appearance
  • Sugar And Spoon Transportation ...

Excerpt from the introduction:

This edition features a completely different routine for MacDonald's Aces and a simple way to make the gaffs yourself. This is more of a platform or parlor version and not a close-up trick. The patter and presentation are also completely different from MacDonald's Aces. This is also different from the version in Hilliard's Lost Notebook. Gregg performed this on TV in 1968 long before Hilliard's notebook was even found. If you pride yourself on being different from the crowd, you'll love this. A very catchy storyline and premise is included.

Next follows many updates on a trick of Gregg's,...

Plot: While Holmes escapes boredom to a cocaine-induced haze sitting in his apartment on Baker Street, a beautiful but distressed young woman, Mary Morstan, asks for the help of Holmes and Watson. Her father vanished ten years ago. Starting six years ago she received every year from an anonymous benefactor a large precious pearl, totaling six pearls today. Now she received an invitation to meet the anonymous sender of pearls. It is an intriguing case that Holmes and Watson happily accept...

The most exciting scene of the novel is what could be called a 19th-century version of a high-speed...

A card is chosen and lost in the deck. The deck is spread on the table. A pendulum is passed over the deck and begins to move over a group of cards. These small numbers of cards are then spread separately on the table. The pendulum is passed again over the cards and the pendulum begins to move clearly over one card. The card is revealed: it's the card of the spectator. This is a good magic trick right?

One day, I dreamed that this trick was done totally by the spectator, thanks to his intuition. I never touch the deck. I never touch the spectator. I never touch the pendulum. I never touch...

Pet secrets of some of the most celebrated close-up magicians of all time.

Table of Contents

• Preface: Close-Up Magic by Bert Allerton
• What Makes a Trick by Al Baker
• Bottoms Down by Al Baker
• Mobilizing the Aces by Dai Vernon
• Ball, Cone and Handkerchief by Dai Vernon
• Convening Kings by Francis Carlyle
• The Squeeze-Away Coin by Ross Bertram
• And the Part of a Garment by Emil Jarrow
• Card Effect With Two Packs by Nate Leipzig
• The Disconcerting Coins by Cliff Green
• Precognition by Cliff Green
• Scarne's Power of Thought by John Scarne ...

You, too, can be a stage hypnotist!

A monumental work devoted to the performance of stage hypnotism, written by a close confidant of Dunninger. Contains not only individual tests, but a complete two-hour show, as well. Written by an experienced operator (and owner of a stage hypnotic show), this course provides authentic instructions for performing a complete evening's entertainment.

The libraries of many seasoned professionals are incomplete, as they do not have this book in their collection. With this new revised edition, it's priced so reasonably that now virtually any interested...

The magician spreads a shuffled deck in front of two spectators. Spectator 1 selects one card and remembers it. Spectator 2 does the same. Both of them thoroughly shuffle the deck and cut it in two halves. The magician loses one card in each pile and gathers the deck. While the spectators cut the deck multiple times, the magician writes a prediction and tables it face down, in full view. For the first selection, the magician says he was inspired by the 21-Card Trick. He deals the cards in three piles and asks Spectator 1 to give him the pile where his card lies. The magician removes one card...