I recently bought a hardback copy of Discovery of Witchcraft. I had been looking for one for a long time. It looks like a facsimile of the original first edition, however it does contained minor tweaks originally made in a reprint in the early 1800s. It is still in the original Middle English, but a few letters have been switched to make it more readable. So, Reginald Scot refers to all Magicians, Carnies, Street Hustlers engaged in scams, ect as "Jugglers" and uses the word Jugglings for sleight of hand tricks. In the original version these words were spelled iugglers and iugglings. They switched the i for a j, but still used all the same words.
The book is shocking and how modern the descriptions of magic tricks are. The card section was especially shocking. He even says that people using sleight of hand to cheat at card and dice games was a huge problem in England at the time.
Well, he talks about card controls, slip shuffling, and forcing cards. He also mentions a card prediction to Walnut that is freaking awesome. He says to bore out a little hole in the Walnut. Write the force card on a small piece of paper and stick it in the Walnut. When you crack open the Walnut you destroy the evidence.
Well, this trick is still killing audiences on national television to this day, but people generally use an orange. That way they can fit a whole card in the orange. However, in 1584 a single deck of cards was very expensive. You had to make one deck last. I'm guessing that in 16th century England, oranges were an expensive luxury item as well.
My idea for really cranking this up would be to rip a small corner off of a card and then tell tell the spectator to hold out their hands and crack the Walnut open and reveal the corner.
The book is shocking and how modern the descriptions of magic tricks are. The card section was especially shocking. He even says that people using sleight of hand to cheat at card and dice games was a huge problem in England at the time.
Well, he talks about card controls, slip shuffling, and forcing cards. He also mentions a card prediction to Walnut that is freaking awesome. He says to bore out a little hole in the Walnut. Write the force card on a small piece of paper and stick it in the Walnut. When you crack open the Walnut you destroy the evidence.
Well, this trick is still killing audiences on national television to this day, but people generally use an orange. That way they can fit a whole card in the orange. However, in 1584 a single deck of cards was very expensive. You had to make one deck last. I'm guessing that in 16th century England, oranges were an expensive luxury item as well.
My idea for really cranking this up would be to rip a small corner off of a card and then tell tell the spectator to hold out their hands and crack the Walnut open and reveal the corner.