Hocus Pocus, or The Whole Art of Legerdemain

A conjuring book reprinted again and again through the 18th century: the cups and balls, coin, card and ball tricks of the period, with the patter and woodcut illustrations. This scan is a later Glasgow edition.

What’s inside

1. A description of the operator — the four parts of legerdemain and the qualities a performer needs
2. The cups and balls
3. Wonders to show — the magic lanthorn, eating knives and forks, a ring through the cheek, the blowing book, children dancing in a glass
4. Tricks with money — coins passed between the hands, money into counters, a groat that sinks through a table
5. Transformations by folding paper
6. Tricks with cards — naming a card thought of, one card for twenty gentlemen, a pack changed into pictures
7. Of confederacy — the author’s promised chapter, beginning with curing the toothache
8. Tricks with fire — a room that seems all on fire, eating fire, lighting a candle with cold water
9. More card tricks — four kings into four aces, naming all the cards, the constable and the knave, a card into a live bird
10. Laces and ribbons — a lace cut and restored, ribbons pulled from the mouth
11. Bodkins, cords and daggers — a cord through the nose, a bodkin through the tongue, cutting off your arm
12. Tricks with drink, eggs and glass — water into wine, sport with an egg, freezing by the fireside, cutting glass
13. Trouble-wit and the two bells — a folded paper called trouble-wit
14. Birds, boxes and the fountain of command — bird-seed into a living bird, a sixpence out of a box, calling for any card
15. To seem to kill a horse and cure him again — plus the fulminating or thundering powder

Henry Dean, 1722. Complete 120-page PDF. Free to download: check out at $0 and the file arrives by email and on your order page.

This classic is in the public domain. Scans come from library copies, so expect the odd stain or stamp of an old book.