Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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Knotted Silks

The principle of upsetting knots to make them dissolve, on which Slydini mounted his famous routine, appears in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, p. 336. It appears in a number of other works on conjuring from that time on. A prominent nineteenth-century example is the anonymous The Magicians' Own Book, 1857, p. 13 (also published as The Boy's Own Conjuring Book, 1859).