Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Hindu Shuffle Force

This force is described in R.P.'s Ein Spiel Karten, 1853, p. 43 of the Pieper translation. There, in “The Non Plus Ultra,” it is done with a variant overhand shuffle, with the deck turned on end.

The Hindu Shuffle itself didn't hit the magic scene until the early 20th century. See Jean Hugard's Card Manipulations No. 1, 1933, p. 2; Farelli's Card Magic, Part 1, 1933, p. 35; and Theo Annemann's “Light on the Hindu Shuffle” in The Jinx, No. 56, May 1939, p. 398.

The newness of this shuffle to magicians is indicated by Farelli's unfamiliarity with the term “Hindu shuffle”. Instead, he 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.