The Mysterious Hypnotised Card

A good story arrives at the most appropriate time. This story arrived in 2015 when I was with Luis de Matos in Portugal working on the latest DVD album in the Essential Magic Collection. The subject was Finn Jon, a performer I’ve admired since I first saw him on television in the 1970s. I still have the notes of his performances in my diaries. And now, here he was, sitting opposite me and telling stories. And one of them was about the card on the wall, a trick very much on my mind.

The story took place at Christian Fechner’s luxury apartment in Paris. Fechner was a magician and movie producer. I’d watched him win the Grand Illusion category at FISM in Brussels in 1979 with a series of technologically advanced illusions all later explained in his lavish 1988 book, Soirees Fantastiques. But what Finn was about to explain was in a way much more baffling and it was performed by a magician in that room who used no technology whatsoever in his act, Slydini.

Slydini handed Finn a deck of playing cards and asked him to go over to the other side of the apartment, take a playing card and place it flat against the wall. And then to take his hand away from the card. To Finn’s astonishment the card did not fall to the floor, it stayed there as if magnetised.

‘Put another one, said Slydini. ‘It also sticks.’ Finn took another card, placed it on the wall and, as Slydini had promised, the card mysterious stuck there.

‘The next one will fall,’ said Slydini. Finn tried a third card and sure enough it didn’t stick, simply falling to the floor.

‘Now go to that wall,’ said Slydini. Finn walked across the room, took another card from the deck and it too adheres to the wall. So did a second card. ‘That card will fall,’ said Slydini pointing to one of the two cards. Weirdly, it did just that. It was one of the most unusual tricks Finn had ever seen.

I was glad to hear this story because this very effect had been on my mind prior to visiting Portugal. I’d read a note in The Magic Circular (Sept, 1941) where the editor was taking a sceptical attitude to a trick that had just been published in February issue of The Sphinx. It was contributed by A. P. Johnson, President of the Reno Magic Circle. He called it Card Hypnotism and it went like this:

Here is a clever effect, as old as the Hills, yet I have discovered that very few magicians have the secret. Spectator is asked to select any card from a deck and stand close to the wall. He is now asked to place the card upon the wall and request the card to remain fastened there. He attempts the feat, but the card falls to the floor. Now the magician states he will hypnotise the spectator so that the card will do his bidding. He steps away from the spectator ten feet or so, and advances towards him, making the usual hypnotic incantations. Upon reaching the spectator he casually takes hold of his hand, and requests spectator to now place the card upon the wall. It sticks! And fast, too. Magician then says he will withdraw from the spectator the mystic power. He walks away, and with more incantations of his own choice, withdraws the power. Now spectator again attempts to stick the card upon the wall, but the power is gone. The card falls.

The secret was static electricity. The magician shuffled his feet on the carpet as he walked towards the spectators, generating a static charge. The charge could be conveyed to the spectator upon touch. Johnson went on to say that other articles such as packs of cigarettes could be stuck against the wall or side of a piano using the same method.

This improbable method generated, if you’ll pardon the pun, some discussion in the magazines. Wilfrid Johnson, writing in The Sphinx said he couldn’t get it to work. Group Captain P. G. Tweedie writing in The Magic Circular said that it worked for him when performing in Canada and that a dry atmosphere might well help the method.

Static electricity was the solution to Slydini’s effect too. The carpet at Fechner’s well-appointed apartment was thick and luxurious. That combined with the leather-soled, not rubber, shoes that Finn was wearing made for the perfect combination. Slydini directed Finn to far walls so electricity would build up and static would keep the cards in place. Slydini knew too how long it would take for the charge to wear off. Another trip across the room would build the charge up again. The demonstration came to an end when Slydini walked over to Finn, taking care to build up a very big static charge as he moved across the thick carpet. By way of a finale he touched the back of Finn’s hand, giving him a surprising electric shock.

One year before The Sphinx published Card Hypnotism The Jinx had published Ralph Read’s Animal Magnetism routine. It is in issue 118 and is worth checking out not only for Read’s use of static in a demonstration with paper strips but for a very clever twist on the magnetic cards trick in which cards stick to the performer’s hand. In Read’s version, the cards hang corner to corner from the ‘magnetised’ hand and the spectators can even pick them off. Have never seen anyone do this but it’s a plot worth reviving.

The Fifth Coincidence

Two and a half years ago I published Engel’s QuadrupleCoincidence on this blog, an epic You Do As I Do trick that really does baffle. Earlier this year Laura London, who has been doing the trick quite a lot since we discussed it at The Session convention, suggested that there might be room in the trick for a fifth coincidence. Having performed it regularly she realised that there was an extra beat to be had, perhaps two cards could be selected and pocketed and revealed to match at the end of the trick. I suggested the following handling.

Let’s assume you are using a red deck and a blue deck. From the red deck take out one card, let’s say the Queen of Clubs, and place it in your pocket.

The Queen of Clubs in the blue deck should be marked on the back so that you can easily find it if the cards are spread face-down across the table.

You’re now ready to perform the trick, which is done at a table or bar. Begin by having both decks shuffled. You shuffle the red deck but glimpse the bottom card before placing it face-down on the table. The spectator shuffles the blue deck.

You take the blue deck and spread it face-down on the table in front of you. The spectators follow along, spreading the red deck face-down in front of him.

You move your hand along the blue deck and push out the marked Queen of Clubs towards the centre of the table. You invite the spectator to push a card from his red deck to the centre of the table until it is alongside yours.

You gather up the blue deck and place it aside. The spectator does the same with the red deck.

Now you pick up the red backed card from the centre of the table (the indifferent card) and put it in the same pocket where you have the Queen of Clubs. The spectator picks up the blue backed card, the marked Queen of Clubs, and without looking at it, places it in his pocket.

If you have to, you can say, ‘You take care of my card and I’ll take care of yours.’ But I wouldn’t. This is a You Do As I Do trick and your theme should be that the spectator follows along and does exactly what you do. You move first. He moves second. I’ve seen video of Akira Fujii doing a totally silent presentation of You Do As I Do and it is very effective. It might be worth figuring out how to do it with Engel’s Quadruple Coincidence. However, I digress.

From this point on you can segue into Engel’s Quadruple Coincidence as described in the earlier blog post. You’ll find that here. The spectator selects his card from the red deck, the bottom card of which you already know.

Four coincidences later, when you reach the end of the routine, you raise your hand, show it empty, then slowly reach into your pocket. The spectator does the same, reaching into his pocket. Together you pull the cards from your pockets. You turn the card around, so does the spectator. Both cards are the Queen of Clubs.

NOTES: The Queen of Clubs can be marked in any way that enables you to find it. Instead of a mark on the back you can use a short card or Will de Seive style embossed card (Greater Magic – Two New Locator Cards) so that you cut to it rather than push it from the spread.

Make a mental note of the card that you place in your pocket from the spectator’s red deck. This card is now effectively out of play. You might need to make an adjustment if its mate turns up in one of the key coincidence positions later on.

I'm not entirely sure who came up with the You Do As I Do plot. There is a chapter devoted to the plot in The Encyclopedia of Self Working Card Tricks. (1936) And the first item in that chapter is called A Peculiar Coincidence. There's a trick by that name in Burling Hull's 1932 Clever Card Collection. Same plot and method but a fuller description. Several other tricks from that manuscript appear in Encyclopedia of Self Working Card Tricks (later reprinted under Jean Hugard's name as Encyclopedia of Card Tricks) so I think we can be fairly sure this is where Glen Gravatt, the anonymous author at that time, got the trick from.

Johnny Thompson has now revealed his own much anticipated handling for Engel’s Quadruple Coincidence and you’ll find it in the recently published The Magic of Johnny Thompson. This is a wonderful book and it also contains Johnny’s handling of a version of the Koran Deck, The Pump Deck. Johnny performed The Pump Deck routine at this year’s The Session convention and for me it is one of the magical highlights of the year.

You can get The Magic of Johnny Thompson here.

The Session convention takes place in London on January 11^th – 13^th 2019 and can be booked here.

I've written previously about my fondness for The Encyclopedia of Card Tricks here

The Gentleman With a 100 Tricks in his Pockets

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The Jerx blog recently published an interesting idea, The Magic Bucket List. A spectator chooses one of a hundred tricks from a list of tricks ‘I want to do before I die.’ You can read about it on Andy’s blog here.

The Jerx The Magic Magic Bucket List

The idea of a magic list put me in mind of Jean Poisson. I’d read about Jean Poisson, also known as John Fish, in Abracadabra magazine. He was a friend of the editor, Goodliffe Neale, who described him as one of his ‘favourite close-up exponents.’ Of his first meeting with Jean in 1948 he said, ‘I enjoyed meeting Jean Poisson, French magician – and very expert too – with a typical Parisian appearance and a delightful accent which made his quite fluent English as incomprehensible as his French.’ His heavily accented English was much commented up and Jean used it to comedy effect, for instance, when performing a rope trick he’d refer to using four hands to perform it with. ‘These two hands and these two ends,’ holding up the ends of the rope.

You’ll find much written about Jean Poisson in the magic journals of the 50s, 60s and 70s. He was born in Angers, France, in 1915, though later made Brussels his home. Gave shows as a semi-professional magician. Served in the army during WWII where he continued his interest in magic by doing shows for the troops. After the war he became a director of Cointreau, the liqueur firm. His work gave him many opportunities to travel across Europe, the UK, and to America where he lived for eighteen months in Trenton, New Jersey. He attended conventions and magic meetings wherever he went. And sometimes, to the delight of conventioneers, samples of the Cointreau liqueur went with him.

At magic conventions Jean was famous for his cut and restored tie. Magicians knew the trick used a stooge but Jean’s presentation was very funny and the trick became something of a running gag. Goodliffe Neale once stooged for him and apparently was incredibly convincing. Alan Kennaugh, writing in The Magigram, described an occasion when Jean asked for a volunteer and twelve men all wearing identical ties rushed onto the stage. But mostly Jean was noted for his ‘pocket tricks’ especially his unusual method of presenting them. As a result he was known by various names, ‘The Man of a 100 Gags,’ ‘The Gentleman with a 100 Tricks in his Pockets,’ or even ‘The Man of a 1000 Tricks.’

And here is where the story of Jean Poisson intersects with The Jerx. David Berglas told me that Jean actually had an actual list of the hundred tricks he could perform. It was a kind of menu of magic which could be handed to the spectator so that he can choose his entertainment. It would be fascinating if someone out there had a copy of the list.

That the magic in Jean’s pockets consisted of more than a deck of cards and a few coins is perhaps shown by what he once told Goodliffe Neale, ‘I only give an impromptu show – it takes me half-an-hour to prepare.’ To discover what those tricks might be I scoured the archives (courtesy of Ask Alexander). Here’s what I’ve found.

Chief among them is certainly The Devil Cigarette. This was the continuous production of smoke from an unlit cigarette. An interesting idea that seems to predate the usual smoking thumb trick. It was said that he vanished a birdcage every minute. ‘It is his idea of a pocket trick.’ He performed Premonition, rope routines and had a ‘a delightful trick with two coins and a pretty girl.’

Billy McComb built a Close-up Card Sword routine for him and described it in Abracadabra. Jean Poisson marketed a device called Cigimmick through Harry Stanley. I think this was like a double-barrelled cigarette pull. You could push a cigarette into one barrel of the gimmick as it was held in the fist and pull out a feather flower from the other barrel to affect a transformation, the gimmick flying away up the sleeve. It had many different uses. Another marketed effect was Timothy the Trained Tortoise in which a toy tortoise found a selected card. Earlier he had what was considered a ‘very unusual effect where a mechanical bird located a chosen card which indicates that it might have been an early version of an effect that became more common post Don Alan.

At the 1949 British Ring convention he performed a trick with a robot swan. A toy swan dived to the bottom of a tank of water and came back up with a selected card. The trick was credited to Minar the Magician of Algeria and you can find it described in The Magic Wand (March 1950) and very interesting it is too. The basic method would work just as well today.

Flying Ring and Do As I Do Imp Bottles (See Ganson’s Close-Up Magic Volume 1) were also favourites. He told Francis Haxton he did not like card tricks but he did publish a couple including a nice self-worker called I Love Suzy in Abracadabra (January 4^th 1975).

I wonder what ‘the amazing close-up trick with a miniature pagoda’ was that he performed at the IBM convention in Brighton in 1954.

Another intriguing item was his version of the inexhaustible bottle trick. Jean used a tiny kettle ‘about two inches high’ to pour an unlimited amount of drinks. It was used as a gag at a convention, rather than a major mystery, and was said to be a version of the Miraculous Wine Bottle described in William Robinson’s Spirit Slate Writing and Kindred Phenomena and the method was presumably the same. I do like the idea of a tiny kettle producing a huge amount a liquid. Possibly shots of Cointreau. It feels very magical.

In the 1970s Jean’s interest turned to mentalism and he worked under the name of Jean Sonus. The 100 tricks list was dispensed with but an insight into Jean’s repertoire can still be found in the Triad he published in Abracadabra (June 26^th, 1976). These included a gaffed ace assembly, a handling of the Martin Sunshine Color Vision and a paddle routine with paper matches.

In that article Jean talked about magicians ‘not having anything on them’ when asked to do a trick and listed the items he carried with him so that he would be ready at all times. They included, among other things:

• Out to Lunch
• T & R Cigarette Paper
• Kaps Paper to Dollar Bills
• Sheet of rubber for Coin Through Rubber into Glass
• T & R Tissue Paper
• Nail Writer
• Milbourne Christopher’s Paper Money
• Find the Lady
• Gypsy Thread

In the right sleeve of every suit he had the elastic and nylon gimmick to perform the magnetic pencil or knife trick. The left sleeve was fitted with a pull for the Vanishing Key. He said he followed the Boy Scout motto of  ‘Be prepared!’

It would be fascinating to find the list that Jean Poisson used. The Devil Cigarette, the name of his smoke from nowhere routine, gives us an idea of how he titled the tricks so that the surprise was not revealed but I’d be very interested in hearing from anyone who has more details to share.

NOTES: I asked if anyone had anything to share and Chris Woodward sent along a photograph of Jean Poisson's Cigimmick which I mentioned earlier in the article. If you're curious as to what this double-chambered gimmick looked like. Here it is. Thanks Chris:

From the Nadine and Chris Woodward Collection