The Cups and Balls and other Sleight of Hand from Hocus Pocus, Jr. our first e-book!

Bill Palmer, owner and founder of Adesso Verlag, has long been an aficionado of the cups and balls. For many years, he featured a version of this classic of magic in his Renaissance Festival act. While he was researching a part he played at Cavalier Dayes of Texas, Bill became engrossed in Hocus Pocus Junior, one of the oldest magic books in the English language.

This book contains what may be the first complete magic routine in the English language. We are now offering this routine as an e-book, in .pdf form.

The Cups and Balls and Other Lessons in Sleight of Hand from Hocus Pocus Junior

contains the complete cups and balls routine, plus the hand to pocket routine and some other manipulations from the first and third editions of Hocus Pocus Junior. The text is suprisingly up to date for a book from the 17th century, and some of the instructions are certainly noteworthy. All of this has been painstakingly transcribed into modern English type by Bill Palmer. There are also historical notes of interest. The price of this e-book is only $7.50.

From Ralf Wichmann-Braco, the genius of Berlin, comes this clever plot for a combination of principles.

The performer brings out a nice wooden box, which contains a small cardboard box, a felt tip marker, a deck of playing cards which have a rubber band around them, and a second deck of playing cards, as well.

The performer borrows a small item from an audience member, and places it into the small cardboard box. This is placed inside the larger box along with the marker. However, before he places the marker into the box, the performer hynotizes it, and commands it to open the box, peek inside, and discover what the item is. The marker is then supposed to go over to the deck, pull out a card, write the name of the object on the back of the card, and replace it, reversed, into the pack of playing cards.

While this is going on, the performer starts into a card trick with the other deck. He has a cards selected and returned to the pack.

Suddenly he realizes that the noises in the box have stopped. He opens the box, spreads the cards face-up and sees that the marker has written the name of the item on the back of that card. Not only that, the card matches the one selected by the spectator.

You will need to do some minor construction for this, but most of the items involved are things you already have.

Price, $15.00.

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For permission to republish contact Bill Palmer at bill@adessoverlag.com