Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Hindu Shuffle

The Hindu Shuffle arrived on the scene in the early 20th century. 1933, in particular, was a banner year for the technique in print. See Jean Hugard's Card Manipulations No. 1, 1933, p. 2; Farelli's Card Magic, Part 1, 1933, p. 35; Carl Shome's card control and force in The Sphinx Vol. 32 No. 2, Apr. 1933, p. 40 and Vol. 32 No. 7, Sep. 1933, p. 205, respectively, and a closer look at the shuffle in Theo Annemann's article, “Light on the Hindu Shuffle” in The Jinx, No. 56, May 1939, p. 398.

The newness of this shuffle to magicians is indicated by some of the aforementioned performers' unfamiliarity with the term “Hindu Shuffle”. Instead, Shome calls it a “running cut”, and Farelli calls it a “strip cut shuffle” and equates it with an unidentified “card table artifice” in Erdnase. The artifice he has in mind may be the third blind cut, titled “To Retain the Top Stock”, in Expert at the Card Table, 1902, p. 41. The term “Hindu Shuffle” was coined by Jean Hugard in Card Manipulations No. 1, ibid, who named it as such due to seeing a Hindu magician use the technique thirty years prior.