Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Multiple Card Revelation

The first to record the idea of routining a sequence of different card revelations seems to be Professor Hoffmann, who describes a five-card revelation in Tricks with Cards, 1889, p. 206, as an optional prelude in “The Fairy Star”. In this routine, the five cards are found by cutting to the first selection, making the second come to the bottom of the deck, changing a wrong card to the third selection, making the fourth fly to a pocket, and the fifth rise out of the pack.

T. Page Wright developed a personal handling and presentation for a five-card revelation, called “The Five Senses”, which was included in Page Wright's Notebook, 1933, p. 47. Wright refers to the core effect as the “old feat of locating a number of drawn cards,” which may allude to the 1889 Hoffmann description or others yet to be discovered.

The next published routine along this line appears to be “Supreme Control” by Edward Victor in Magic of the Hands, 1937, p. 14.

In Genii, Vol. 62 No. 11, Nov. 1999, p. 28, appears an excerpt from a letter from Charlie Miller to Faucett Ross, written on June 16, 1937. In this letter, Miller describes a Multiple Card Location that, according to him, was associated with both Max Malini and Dr. James Elliott. Miller states in his letter, “I suppose that the trick is very old.”

Another early published example of such a routine is found in Ed Marlo's booklet Marlo's Discoveries, 1946, which is centered around the idea of revealing multiple selections. He suggested controlling ten cards and then using any of the revelations that he taught.

However, the general idea of locating a number of cards may also be found in “The General Card”; see particularly H. Dean's description of this ancient trick in The whole art of legerdemain, or, hocus pocus in perfection, 1722, p. 54 of the sixth edition, titled “How to let twenty gentlemen draw twenty cards, and to make one card every man's card.” A version of this trick appeared in an unpublished manuscript known as Sloane 424, c. 1600s, p. 159 of the Pieper translation. The translation was printed in Gibecière, Vol. 5 No. 2, Summer 2010, pg. 141-172.