1. The rubber band illusion

The most astonishing tricks are those in which the magic happens, not under cover, but in full view. The Rubber Band Illusion is one of these. A rubber band visibly penetrates the performer's fingers. It looks like real magic.

Place a rubber band around the first two fingers of the right hand. Put a second rubber band over the first joint of the forefinger, give it a twist, and put it over the second finger, twist it again, put it over the third finger, give it another twist, and put it over the fourth finger, with the result
shown in fig. 21A.

Show both sides of the hand to the spectators. "This first rubber band is not just an ordinary rubber band. It was once owned by a witch. Notice how securely it is fastened on the fingers. All the exits are barred. And yet if I close my fingers

figure 21


and then open them quickly, the magic rubber band passes visibly through all four fingers!"

As you talk, put your left hand under the right one antl stretch the hanging loop of the first rubber band so that when you close your fingers, all four finger tips can enter the loop (fig. 21B). This concealed move does the trick. When you open your fingers quickly, the band will jump mysteriously from the first and second fingers over to the third and fourth (fig. 21C).

Repeat the same action and the band will jump back again.

This impossibility may be compounded by using colored rubber bands. Place a red rubber band around the first and second fingers and a green one around the third and fourth fingers. Entwine a third band (of another color) around the finger tips. Now the left hand draws down both colored bands together and all four right fingers enter both bands. Open your fingers quickly and you have two miracles for the price of one. The two bands instantly change places!

This is one of the best of all impromptu tricks; it proves conclusively that you can't believe what you see.

2. the magnetized knife

A table knife clings to the palm of the magician's hand as though magnetized — then falls when commanded to do so.

The performer explains exactly how this was done, then does it again. This time the spectators see that the explanation given is impossible.

The first explanation is the true one, but the spectators end by doubting it because the magician has switched to a second, different, and better method. The moral: Never trust a magician!

The first method is a simple swindle which takes advantage of the fact that a pinch of misdirection can prevent a spectator from seeing something that is right in front of his nose.

Begin by holding the left hand palm up and lay the center of the knife on it. Close the fingers around the knife. Now grasp the left wrist with the right hand (fig. 22A). And talk, because what you say provides the needed misdirection. Indirectly, you are telling the audience what to look at so they will overlook something that is plainly visible.

"I squeeze my wrist tightly, shake it a bit, and then turn my left hand over." Relax the right fingers a bit and turn the left hand over so that it is back up. Under the cover of this movement straighten the right finger beneath the left hand and press it against the knife (fig. 22B). Only three of your right fingers are now visible, but if you continue talking about something else, as in the patter given here, this is never noticed.

"When I slowly straighten my fingers, the knife, instead of falling, remains supported by absolutely nothing." (fig. 22C). "When I say, 'Stop this nonsense!' it hears, obeys, and falls." Pull the hidden forefinger back a bit and let the knife drop.

Now repeat the trick, but stop while the knife is still suspended and say, "I'll let you in on a secret — I'm cheating. Apparently none of you can count as far as four. If you could you would have noticed that my right hand now has only three fingers showing. The missing one is here."

Raise the hands, and let the spectators see how the hidden finger supports the knife. This exposé gets a laugh because they realize how easily they have been fooled. Now for the double cross. This depends on a secret bit of advance preparation. From the beginning, you have had a long pencil up your left sleeve, held against the inner side of your arm by your wrist-watch band.

At the end of your explanation, let the knife fall and, as the attention of the audience follows it, remove your right

figure 22

hand from your left wrist, grasp the end of the pencil and pull it out so that it extends beneath the palm of your left hand.

"Of course, having spent twenty years in Tibet studying Yoga, I could eliminate the cheating and use real magic, but that's very difficult." No one believes this statement and so you proceed to prove it.

This time your left hand remains palm down throughout. Pick up the knife and place it beneath the left hand, between the palm and the hidden pencil (fig. 22D). Close the left fingers around the knife. Grasp the left wrist again, but this time all four fingers can be seen. "You see. No cheating. All four fingers in view. But if I concentrate hard enough . . ." Slowly open the left fingers. ". . . the knife doesn't dare fall until I give it my permission. It's scared of me."

Hold this position a moment, then say, "All right, knife, that's enough." Loosen your hold on your wrist and pencil, and the knife falls.

Don't push the pencil back up your sleeve immediately. Wait until they stop watching your hands. Audience attention always scatters just after the climax of a trick. Watch for this and push the pencil up out of sight then.


3. egocentric rays

A trick from India. In its original form, a Hindu fakir would ask someone to write his initials on a pebble, throw the pebble into the sacred Ganges River, then hold his hand out, palm toward the water. The fakir would mutter an incantation — and the initials would mysteriously reappear on the hand. You can perform this feat of Indian magic at the dinner table by using a sugar cube instead of a pebble and a glass of water in place of the Ganges.

Ask a spectator to draw a simple geometric figure or print a letter of the alphabet on one side of a sugar lump with a soft lead pencil. While he is doing this, take a drink of water, and leave some moisture on the outside of the rim of the glass. Then moisten the ball of your thumb by passing it over the damp glass rim.

Take the sugar lump and show everyone the pencil mark. Pick up the glass of water with your other hand and place it before a spectator. This action will divert attention away from the sugar. At the same time, turn the sugar lump in your fingers and press your moistened thumb on the mark. The thumb will pick up a reverse image of the mark. Now drop the sugar (mark up) into the water and have the spectator cover the mouth of the glass with his hand. "No," you say then, "that's not quite right." Lift his hand off the glass, and move the glass slightly as though its exact position was of great importance. This misdirection serves to keep attention on the glass so that your audience does not notice that you are holding the spectator's hand with your thumb beneath it and pressed against his palm. This unseen action leaves the mark on his hand.

Replace his hand on the glass, then call attention to the small air bubbles from the sugar. "Those bubbles contain egocentric rays which have a curious action. Notice how they take the particles of graphite from the sugar and carry them up to the surface of the water."

Wait until the mark on the sugar has dissolved, then add, "The egocentric rays, through some mysterious electrochemical process still unexplained by science, redeposit all those particles of graphite in the same pattern on your hand."

This is nonsensical and yet — when the spectator turns his hand over he finds the mark on his palm. The time interval and the misdirection in what you have been saying makes him forget that you ever touched his hand. Some spectators will half believe the egocentric-ray theory you have suggested and will try the experiment for themselves. When it fails, as it always does, you say, "Apparently you're not egocentric enough."

Here's a variation which is even more inexplicable because the spectator himself drops the sugar into the water and you never touch it at all. You have a second sugar lump and another pencil which you place in your lap before you begin the trick. While the spectator is drawing his mark on his sugar lump, you secretly duplicate it on your own. Your moistened thumb picks up this duplicate impression, and, after the spectator drops his sugar lump into the glass, you transfer your mark to his palm.

4. the linking clips

Two paper clips link themselves together in a curious fashion. Every child wants to learn to do a trick and this is one you can teach them and which they can do immediately.

Fold one-third of the length of a dollar bill inward. Fold the other end outward. The upper edge of the bill now has the shape of the letter S. Put two paper clips on the upper

figure 23

edge of the bill (fig 23). One clip holds the left end of the bill and the center section together. The other joins the right end of the bill and the center section.

When you pull the ends of the bills in opposite directions the paper clips jump off the bill and link together.

The stunt can be seen more easily by a group if you use a chain of a dozen or more clips linked together. Have two spectators hold the opposite ends of the chain. Unlink two clips in the center of the chain and attach them to the bill. Now, when you pull on the bill, the clips link and the two halves of the chain are rejoined.

5. The surprise penetration

A dinner-table trick with a real surprise ending.

Fold a paper napkin and place a drinking glass on it as shown in fig. 24A, page 66. Roll the glass forward, wrapping it in the paper. Twist the ends of the paper at the bottom of the glass so that the paper will remain in position.

Place a coin on the table. "I am going to make the coin pass down through the table top. Since this can only be done in the dark, we must cover the coin." Lay a folded paper napkin on the coin and then place the paper-covered glass on both, mouth down.

Make whatever magic passes and intone whatever incantation you like, then pick up the covered glass and bring it back to the edge of the table. Ask someone to lift the napkin and see if the coin has gone.

As everyone watches this operation, allow the glass to slide out of its paper cover and down into your left hand which is ready to receive it (fig. 24B).

When the coin is seen to be still there, ask someone to turn it over on the excuse that it is wrong-side-up. Then have the napkin replaced. Put the glass on it again (actually only the paper cover). Start to make another magic pass, then say, "Wait, I just thought of an even better trick." Drop your left hand to your lap, get the glass and reach out under the table with it. "I'll make the glass go through the table instead." Smack your hand solidly down on the paper cover, squashing it flat. Then bring the glass from under the table.

This unexpected finale is a real surprise.

If you use an unbreakable plastic glass, place it between your knees just after it has dropped from its cover. Then bring your left hand above the table. Now, when you flatten the paper cover, spread your knees and let the glass fall to the floor.

6. Through the table

Three paper balls pass magically through a table top and a fourth flies invisibly from one place to another.

figure 24

Tear a paper napkin into quarters and crumple each piece into a ball. Lay them out on a table about a foot and a half apart, forming a square. Show two men's hats, letting the spectators see that both are empty. Hold them by the brims with your fingers inside the hats.

Now, as in many tricks, you proceed promptly to get one jump ahead of the spectators and stay that way throughout. First, put the hat you hold in your right hand down over the ball on the right. As you do this, extend the first and second fingers beneath the hat and clip the ball between them.

Then bring the hat you hold in your left hand over to the right so that it is directly above and covers the right hand as it comes out from under the first hat with the ball (fig. 25A).

Your right hand takes this hat and your left hand goes at once, taking the attention of the audience with it, to the second paper ball, which it picks up for a moment and then replaces. Your right hand now covers this ball with the hat and leaves the concealed ball there also.

From the spectator's viewpoint the trick is just beginning; actually, with this one secret move, you are practically done. Pick up one of the remaining balls with your right hand, carry it down under the table, and rap your knuckles against the underside of the table as you say, "Go!"

Lift the hat on your left by the crown with the left hand, showing the two balls. Bring the hat back to the table edge so that it covers' your right hand, which comes out from under the table with the ball it still holds and takes the hat by the brim (fig. 25B).

Repeat the same action. Cover the two visible balls with the hat and add the third one. Pick up the last ball with the right hand, put it under the table, command it to go, and lift the hat, showing three balls.

Again, transfer the hat from the left to the right hand just as the latter comes out from under the table. Drop the hat on the three balls, adding the fourth.

You are all set for the climax. Point to the hat on the right and say, "Now I'll make the first ball fly invisibly through the air and through both hats to join the other three. Watch!" Snap your fingers. Stand back and ask the spectators to lift the hats themselves.

Practice this trick before trying it on anyone, so that you can do all the moves without hesitation. When done smoothly, it is highly effective and very mystifying.

figure 25

figure 26

7. Soft steel

Two safety pins, linked together, are separated without being opened, one apparently passing visibly through the other.

Link the two pins and hold them exactly as shown in fig. 26. Note the pin held by the right hand. The bar which opens is at the top, and this bar is the only one which lies above the bars of the other pin at the intersections where they cross.

Blow on the pins, explaining, "This softens the steel." Then quickly jerk both hands apart. The pins separate, although still closed. Since there are several other starting positions, all of them wrong, anyone else who tries the feat is unlikely to succeed.

7. The message from the ashes

The performer tells a story about a King and his Court Magician in which the magic happens as the story is told. We give the story first, the method at the end.

Once upon a time there was a King who had a large family of Princes and Princesses. Like all parents, the King was a little bit crazy and thought that the Princes and Princesses should help do some of the chores around the castle. One chore that they all hated was emptying the wastebaskets. Nobody knows why. Maybe it was because there were 116 rooms in the castle and 198 wastebaskets.

"I don't know what to do," the King told the Prime Minister. "Every time I tell one of those kids that if he doesn't empty the wastebaskets I'll chop off his head he runs away and hides under a bed. I can't spend all day looking under the 95 beds in this castle; it wouldn't be dignified. The situation is serious. Do you think I should call out the Army?"

"You can't," the Prime' Minister said. "The Army is on vacation. But I have a scheme. We will put the kids' names in a hat. Then you issue a Royal Decree announcing that 'there will be a drawing for a prize every morning."

"Maybe I am thick-headed," said the King, "but I don't see how giving away prizes will solve the wastebasket problem."

"Why not, your Majesty? The child whose name is drawn must empty the wastebaskets. That's the prize and kids love prizes."

The King thought about this for a minute, and then turned to the Captain of the Guards. "We must give the Prime Minister a suitable reward for his suggestion. Turn him over to the Chief Executioner and have his head chopped off. The' Princes and Princesses would all be mad at me if I tried such a mean underhanded scheme. Besides, I don't want to make people mad at me while the Army is on vacation."

But the wastebasket problem got worse every day. In fact, the gold wastebasket in the throne room became so filled with old Royal Decrees, bills, and chewing-gum wrappers that the King received a warning from the fire department saying that if something was not done about it they would have to close the palace and board up all the windows.

The King had to do something. So he tried the Prime Minister's scheme anyway. He got all the Princes and Princesses together and wrote the name of each one on a separate slip of paper. He mixed the papers in a hat and had one drawn. But the Princes and Princesses suspected the King
was up to no good and they wouldn't show him the slip which had been drawn.

The poor King didn't know what to do so he called for the Court Magician. "You find out who won the prize," he ordered. "And hurry, or I'll have your head chopped off, too. I'm beginning to get angry."

"Oh, that's easy," the Magician said. "We'll just look at all the names left in the hat and see which one is missing."

But while he was saying this one of the princes grabbed all the other slips and burned them.

This made the King really angry. He roared, "I have a good notion to chop off everybody's head!"

"No," the Magician said, "Don't do that. I'll use some magic."

He rolled up his sleeve, took the ashes of the burned papers, muttered a secret incantation, rubbed the ashes on his arm — and the missing name appeared magically!

In advance, cut a narrow piece from one end of a bar of soap. Moisten one end and use it to print the name of one of the spectators on your arm. Another method is to use a strong soap solution and write the letters in script with an artist's water-color brush. When dry, the lettering will be invisible.

When you tell how the King wrote the names on slips of paper, produce a pad and pencil and do the same. Hold the pad so that the spectators cannot see what you write, and tear off each slip, fold it, and drop it into a hat. Ask each child for his first name, then pretend to write it, but actually write the same name each time — the one which is lettered on your arm.

Do this with all the slips except one. On this slip, write the name called, then show it to the spectators on the pretense that you want to make sure you have spelled the name correctly. When you drop this slip into the hat, put it to one side, separated from the others. After all the slips are in, reach into the hat, take the odd slip in your fingers, and mix up the others. Then hold the hat by the brim, your fingers inside and covering the odd slip. Ask a spectator to draw one slip from the hat, and tell him not to open it until the end of the story.

When you reach the point in the story where the papers are burned, take all the remaining slips (including the odd one) out of the hat, and burn them in an ashtray. As you finish the story, roll up your sleeve, take the ashes in your hand, and rub them briskly on your arm. The carbonized ash will stick to the soap and the invisible letters will appear magically (fig. 27).

Ask the spectator who drew the slip to open it and read the chosen name aloud.

figure 27