Roberto Giobbi‘s Introduction to Card Magic © Copyright Notice Copyright © 2012 Roberto Giobbi. All rights reserved. For personal use only. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or utilized by any information storage or retrieval system, nor shall this publication or any part of it be used commercially, or associated with any product or service, or distributed by itself or with other products or services without written permission from the copyright owner. For information about permissions contact: Roberto Giobbi Schlossbergstrasse 5 4132 Muttenz Switzerland Tf:++41-(0)61-463 08 44 e-mail: [email protected] Donation This book is being distributed at no charge to encourage the art of magic. If you enjoyed it and can afford it please make a small contribution. $5 is fine, that’s how much many an app costs, $10 is much appreciated, and if you are a millionaire you may put me in your will. Thank you for letting me know that you appreciated this work and that you would like me to do more. Please click the „Donate“ button below now. THANK YOU! ♦♣ Read Me This PDF is meant as an electronic publication, but you may also print and bind it and use it as a book (obviously without the benefit of film clips) – print-on-demand services such as lulu.com do this at a very reasonable price. Best Use The best way of making use of this PDF is to load it on an iPad or similar device. In order to take advantage of its multi-media features you should have internet access. Working off-line will still allow you to read the text and use the photographs, like any other PDF, but you won’t be able to activate the film clips. Although imbedding the clips into a document is now possible, it would make the PDF very heavy, less comfortable to handle and problematic on Apple products which at the moment don‘t support flash applications. In the near future this may change and we may then send out an updated PDF to all those who have sent us their email address (if you haven‘t yet, please send me your email address and say that you would like to be put on my list - the list is treated confidentially and you will only hear from me when I have a pre-publication offer related to a new book or product). Operating Systems We have tested this PDF on PC, iMac, iPhone and iPad and have no reason to assume that it won’t work on other devices as well. If you use iPhone or iPad, download the PDF to iBooks, GoodReader or Acrobat Reader – all of these apps will allow you to use the film clips without problems. 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Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 3 ♦♣ Thanks! Several people have offered invaluable help in making this work come true. I would like to extend a sincere THANK YOU to ... ... my wife and best friend Barbara for the many, many hours she has put into the design and layout of this course – her help has been invaluable in every sense. ... our son Miro, who did all the film clips on his iPhone4 and who did much of the technical support necessary to obtain a working electronic document. ... Stephen Minch and his Hermetic Press, for graciously allowing me to use passages from our own books, to which we share the copyright. ... Chris Wasshuber and his lybrary.com for letting me use his electronic conversion of some of our E-book texts. ...Richard Hatch for the translation of the passages taken from Card College. ... Nicolas Jeker, for technical consulting and assistance on issues we didn‘t even know existed. ...Marco Caviola, for more technical support and answering too many questions. ... Gustavo Otero, artist and magician, who has provided the chapter illustrations, which – inspired by Picasso and an entry of mine in my book Secret Agenda – are all made of one single line, making them look remarkably simple, however, anything but easy to do – just like good card magic. ... Salvador Pellicer, Pepe Monfort (special thanks for his idea of using photograms) and their Magic Agora team for initiating the project and letting us use the photographs in this course. ... Jamy Ian Swiss, Erik Arfeuille, Daniel Horn and Austin Gannon, who have kindly pointed out flaws and typos. ...Bob Farmer for precious legal advice and other related matters. ... those who I have forgotten, and to whom I sincerely apologize, but whose names I will be glad to ad in future revisions, if they let me know. And thank you, dear reader, in the name of magic and all magicians past and present, for always trying to do your best when you use the material here described, performing magic with dignity and respect towards magic and the audience. I wish you best of success. Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 4 ♦♣ Introduction to Card Magic by Roberto Giobbi Conceived and written by Roberto Giobbi Design and layout by Barbara Giobbi-Ebnöther Photos by Magic Agora & Barbara Giobbi-Ebnöther Film Clips by Miro A. Giobbi MAGIC COMMUNICATION ROBERTO GIOBBI Copyright 2012 by Magic Communication Roberto Giobbi Test Version October 2012 Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 5 ♦♣ Foreword Welcome to this introductory course into the science and art of manipulating a deck of cards for the purpose of artistic magical entertainment. Genesis In early 2012 I attended a youth congress in Germany where I gave several workshops on the subject of card magic. I was very pleased at the interest and passion almost all youngsters displayed, but I was also surprised, if not to say a bit shocked, at the discrepancy between the fairly advanced material they were using and their personal artistic immaturity. I’ve witnessed for the first time in its entirety and on a big scale what many of you already know, namely that most of those joining magic nowadays do so over the internet, having learned from “tutorials” on YouTube and similar sources, and are doing some advanced magic, not always badly, but completely lacking the basics in technique, presentation, and theory. They have started to build the house, so to speak, on the third floor, and the slightest earthquake will bring it down, as it lacks a fundamental support. Although my previous works – the Card College and Card College Light, Lighter and Lightest books and related DVDs - address the issue and provide a remedy, I’m told that the young generation is used to getting information free from the web and don’t even have the little money required to buy the basic tools, both being admittedly debatable topics. At about the same time I was approached by Pepe Monfort and Salva Pellicer from Magic Agora, an on-line magic academy, to create an interactive, multi-medial basic course of card magic. This I did and you can check it out on their site www.magicagora.com. This is the electronic PDF version of it, a multimedia course in 14 lessons teaching the basics of card magic with text, photographs, and film clips. This new project is dedicated to all newcomers to magic, but I hope that it will also meet with the approval of my more experienced readers, because they might find their own insights and experience put into hopefully well-structured and adequate words. How to Make Best Use of This Course I have conceived this course to be used in chronological order. Those among you who are at the ready and can’t wait to do something hands-on may jump ahead to Lessons 2 and 3, but after that are invited to come back to Lesson 1 which gives an overall meaning to the rest. And now let’s start together our pleasant journey into what the great Viennese card virtuoso Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser called the “poetry of magic”. Follow me along with a deck of cards into the wonderland of card conjuring. Yours sincerely, Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 6 ♦♣ Contents Lesson 1: The History of Playing Cards & Some Famous Card Conjurors Lesson 2: Tools and Instruments Lesson 3: Getting Acquainted With Your Instrument Lesson 4: Your First Techniques: Basic Shuffles Lesson 5: Your First Card Trick: «The Mystery of the Triangle» Lesson 6: Ordinary Cuts Lesson 7: A Small Card Miracle: «The Cards Knew» Lesson 8: More Auxiliary Sleights & Review Lesson 9: A Few Simple Flourishes Lesson 10: Audience Management & «The Open Prediction» Lesson 11: Creating a Program Lesson 12: Techniques Without Sleights Lesson 13: Bonus Lesson Lesson 14: Your Next Step Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 7 Lesson 1 ♦♣ The History of Playing Cards & Some Famous Card Conjurors «Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.» Albert Einstein Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 8 Lesson 1 ♦♣ Contents Learning Goals Why You Should Know More About Your Instrument The Probable Origin of Playing Cards Playing Cards – A Complex World of Mystery Symbols Unveiled Cards & Gambling The First Conjuring With Cards The First Books on Card Magic Famous Conjurors and Authors of Card Magic Card Magic is the Poetry of Magic…and a Science You Are a Part of This Rich History Further Reading Useful Links Acknowledgements Golden Rules Golden Rule Number One Roberto Giobbi's Introduction to Card Magic 9 Lesson 1 ♦♣ Learning Goals In this lesson you will learn..