The Juggler's Oracle

A Regency-era handbook laying open the whole art of legerdemain: card tricks, coin and object sleights and the trick apparatus of the travelling conjurer, including an early rattle box. Clean, retypeset edition based on the Project Gutenberg text.

What’s inside

1. The operator
2. Tricks with cards — four aces into knaves, the card in the mirror, a card nailed to the wall by a pistol-shot
3. Cups and balls
4. Conveyance of money, rings and more — coins, rings, and a watch restored after being beaten in a mortar
5. Tricks with boxes — the egg-box, the melting-box, a hundred eggs and a live fowl from an empty bag
6. Experiments with fire — coloured flames, fire-eating, walking on a hot iron bar
7. Tricks with strings, knots and more — a lace cut and restored, ribbon pulled from the mouth
8. Optical illusions — the magic lantern, the phantascope, enchanted mirrors, apparitions
9. Chemical changes — changing a rose’s colour, metallic trees, sympathetic inks
10. Miscellaneous tricks and experiments — the dancing egg, a ring through the cheek, the decapitation trick

Herman Boaz, 1820 · William Cole (London). Complete 101-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.