A charming glimpse of stage magic in the early twentieth century, this engaging manual's time-honored tricks range from sleight of hand with coins, cards, and rope to thought-reading and juggling. Written by a famous magician, its tried-and-true feats and performance tips are illustrated by sixty figures and thirteen vintage photographs. A British stage magician of the 1930s and '40s, Jasper Maskelyne was a third-generation performer in a well-known family of illusionists. During World War II, Maskelyne assembled a squad known as the “Magic Gang” to misdirect Axis bombers and camouflage the activities of the Allied forces with illusions of tanks, battleships, and armies. This new edition of his captivating classic features an introduction by magic historian and author Edwin A. Dawes that recounts Maskelyne's larger-than-life career and exploits.

Books like this contain what may be called the raw material of the art, the processes which the magician can employ at will in building up his larger experiments in magic, each of which should be a complete play in itself. Then, when the student has found out how tricks can be done, he would do well to turn his attention to Our Magic, by Mr. Maskelyne and his associate, Mr. David Devant. And from this logical treatise he can learn how experiments in magic ought to be composed. It is from this admirable discussion of the basic principles of modern magic that more than one of the points made in this paper have been borrowed. Mr. Devant calls attention to the fact that new tricks are common, new manipulative devices, new examples of dexterity and new applications of science, whereas new plots, new ideas for effective presentation, are rare. He describes a series of experiments of his own, some of which utilize again but in a novel manner devices long familiar, while others are new both in idea and in many of the subsidiary methods of execution. One of the most hackneyed and yet one of the most effective illusions in the repertory of the conjurer is that known as the Rising Cards. The performer brings forward a pack of cards, several of which are drawn by members of the audience and returned to the pack, whereupon at the command of the magician they rise out of the pack one after the other in the order in which they were drawn. In the oldest form in which this illusion is described in the books on the art, the pack is placed in a case supported by a rod standing on a base, and the secret of the trick lies on this rod and its base. The rod is really a hollow tube and the base is really an empty box. The tube is filled with sand, on the top of which rests a leaden weight, to which is attached a thread so arranged over and under certain cards as to cause the chosen cards to rise when it descends down the tube; and in putting the cards into the case the conjurer released a valve at the bottom of the tube, so that the sand might escape into the box, whereby the weight was lowered, the thread then doing its allotted work, and the cards ascending into view, no matter how far distant the performer might then be standing. It seems likely that the invention of this primitive apparatus may have been due to the fact that some eighteenth century conjurer happened to observe the sand running out of an hour-glass and set about to find some means whereby this escape of sand could be utilized in his art. The hollow rod, the escaping sand, and the descending weight have long since been discarded; but the illusion of the Rising Cards survives and is now performed in an unending variety of ways. The pack may be held in the hand of the performer, without the use of any case, or it may be placed in a glass goblet, or it may be tied together with a ribbon and thus suspended from cords that swing to and from almost over the heads of the spectators; and however they may be isolated the chosen cards rise obediently when they are bidden. The original effect subsists, even though the devices differ.... The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, Volume 40

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Kabbalah - it is very difficult and to some extent even paradoxical doctrine is very different from the concept of thinking of those ideas, which are peculiar to thinking of the majority of Europeans. On the other hand, the inherent Kabbalah mystery, incompleteness, and symbolic imagery pronounced mysticism plaque were perhaps the most intriguing its qualities that attracted thereto plurality thinkers prone to the occult. However, the important thing: they all saw in Kabbalah refraction characteristic of western occult ideas and propositions - that all the great diversity of the phenomena of the universe, young and old is a certain unity; that all things and phenomena are parts ordered whole; that the universe itself and all the hidden relationships between phenomena which, at first glance, seem to be chaotic and did not related to each other, in fact, control the mysterious laws; that letters and numbers are full of meaning important key to understanding the laws of the universe; that inspiration and imagination is much faster and more reliable can lead to the attainment of the ultimate truth than the proverbial common sense; that man - is both God and the Universe in miniature; and finally, the most important thing - that there is a spiritual path, going that people can free themselves from the purely human limitations, and therefore - to become a superman and understand God. Kabbalah, of course, not the only doctrine, setting out these and similar ideas; they can be found in the system of the Tarot, Despite the fact that the Kabbalists of the past centuries people were purely religious, and perform religious commandments and ceremonies, this, however, did not prevent the fact that Kabbalah eventually gained many of the features and properties of magic. Abraham Abulafia, one of the greatest Kabbalists and mystics of the XIII century, was convinced that the Kabbalah - a very effective means to achieve the magical purposes, and therefore warned fellow of errors slipping into magic. However, the Kabbalistic doctrine of climbing opportunities from lowest to highest, and the reunification of the earthly and the heavenly is a very valuable tool for the mystic, the aspirant for bliss in communion with God, and for the magician who wants to subjugate all the spiritual and physical strength, and sees itself as the Person of God capable to understand the supreme art of magic. In this sense, of great interest is a special aspect of the teachings - the so-called practical Kabbalah is based on the belief that with the help of special rituals, prayers and internal volitional acts a person can actively intervene in the history of the process (eg, zoom Messiah), for each "stimulation from below" (from the man) always corresponds to the "arousal from above " (from God).