How to do the rising card trick

In the rising card, a chosen card is lost in the pack and then slowly rises out of it on command. The simplest version needs only an ordinary deck: get the card to the top, hold the pack facing your audience, and push the card up from behind with your fingertips. Professor Hoffmann taught this hand version in Modern Magic (1876), and it is a great first lesson in angles and timing.

What does the audience see?

Someone picks a card, remembers it and puts it back. The pack is shuffled. You hold the deck upright with its face toward them and ask them to name their card. Then, with no sudden move, their card creeps up out of the pack until it stands well clear of the others.

That’s the whole plot, and it has lasted for centuries. Hoffmann opens his write-up of the stage version with “This is one of the best of card tricks.”

Which version should you start with?

Rising cards come in three broad families.

Version	What you need	Good for
In the hand	Any deck and some practice	Impromptu close-up, learning the plot
In a stand, case or glass	Special apparatus	Parlour and stage, where you can step away
Gimmicked products	The product and its instructions	Hands-off rises that look impossible

This post teaches the first one. It needs only a deck, like many tricks in our card magic collection.

How do you do the beginner version?

This follows Hoffmann’s rising cards “entirely without apparatus” (Modern Magic, pp. 129 to 130), with one change to make it beginner friendly. Hoffmann works it with three cards rising one at a time. Start with one.

1. Have a card chosen. Spread the pack and let someone take any card. Ask them to show it to everyone else, not you.
2. Get it back on top. Hold the pack face down and have them place their card on top. Hoffmann brings the card to the top with the pass, which is a hard sleight. Having it returned to the top skips that.
3. Shuffle without losing it. Hoffmann’s second false shuffle (p. 24) keeps a card on top. Hold the pack upright on its side in your left hand, thumb on the face and fingers on the back. With your right hand, lift out cards from the middle and drop them in small packets onto the face. The pressure of your left fingers keeps the top card where it is.
4. Hold the pack face out. Take the pack upright in your right hand with its face toward the audience: thumb on one side, third and fourth fingers on the other. The chosen card is now at the back, facing you.
5. Make it rise. Ask them to name the card. Rest your first and second fingers on the back card and push it upward with a small alternating movement, one finger after the other, so it climbs smoothly instead of jumping.
6. Finish clean. When the card is well clear, take it by the top edge and hand it over.

Why does it fool people? Hoffmann put it simply: “If the face of the cards is held fairly to the spectators, it will be impossible for them to discover that the cards do not rise from the middle of the pack.”

One note on old versus new: Hoffmann tells you to moisten your fingers slightly for grip. Try it dry first on a deck in good condition and only add a touch of moisture if the card slips. If you want a more convincing way to lose the card than placing it on top, our guide to card control techniques walks through the key card, overhand controls and the pass.

Where did the rising card come from?

It is old. Based on our research, the earliest possible mention is in Tomaso Garzoni’s book La Piazza universale (1587 edition), which says the conjurer Abram Colorni made a card named by a spectator come out of the deck. The wording is vague, so the card may have jumped rather than risen, and nothing in it shows that Colorni invented the trick.

Henry Dean’s Hocus Pocus (1722) describes a chosen card jumping out of a spread pack and running across the table, worked with a hair (p. 43). Versions with the pack standing in a holder called a houlette appeared in the 1700s, including one in Edmé-Gilles Guyot’s Nouvelles récréations physiques et mathématiques, with an improved method in the 1772 edition. Hoffmann’s 1876 houlette version (pp. 125 to 126) uses a forcing pack and duplicate cards, and adds comedy: a queen who refuses to rise until she is asked politely.

The trick also made at least one career. Howard Thurston’s rising cards were sold on the line “The man who mystified Herrmann,” and T. Nelson Downs wrote in The Art of Magic (1909) that the trick “made the reputation of Mr. Thurston,” while pointing out that Thurston did not invent it. For the thread side of this story, see our history of thread magic.

How do you make it play better?

• Get the name out loud first. The rise means nothing until everyone knows which card to watch for.
• Go slow. A card that creeps looks like magic. A card that pops looks pushed.
• Borrow Hoffmann’s joke. His disobedient queen works in the hand too: the card ignores a rude command, then rises for a polite one. It gives you a natural pause and usually a laugh.
• Look at the card, not your hand. Where your eyes go, theirs follow.

What are the common mistakes?

• Bad angles. This is a front-facing trick. Anyone beside or behind you can see your fingers at work, so keep everyone in front.
• Tilting the pack. If the face drifts away from them, people can see the back. Hold it upright and square to your audience, as Hoffmann stresses.
• Losing the card in the shuffle. Practise the shuffle on its own until the top card never moves.
• Rising straight after the shuffle. Put a few seconds of talk between them so the two moments don’t connect.
• A tired deck. Bent or grimy cards drag and catch. A fresh deck from our playing cards range makes the rise smoother.

What helps you take it further?

• Modern Magic by Professor Hoffmann, free from our public-domain library. It covers cards, coins and stage apparatus with the original engravings, including both the hand and houlette versions of the rising cards.
• Ultimate Rising Card from Glass by Sorcier Magic. A chosen card is shuffled back, the deck goes in its box inside a transparent glass, and only the chosen card emerges. It works with any standard 52-card deck with its own box, and the cards, case and glass can be handed out afterwards.

Frequently asked questions