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The original 1584 Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot contained more than just a plea for common sense and a poke at "popery". It detailed for the first time yer actual magic tricks. This guy has extracted and written them up in modern English.

Has anyone bought the resultant ebook, and if so would you mind reviewing it? The idea of incorporating rennaisance magic sounds interesting, but I'm fighting an attack of CUPS.

http://www.greatscotmagic.com/magicshop/discoverie.html

Interesting. Since the ownership of that book must have lapsed ages ago, and as most of the pages on magic are available on line free of charge in modern and original form anyway, I wonder why he's charging $7.50 for it?

Mandrake wrote:Interesting. Since the ownership of that book must have lapsed ages ago, and as most of the pages on magic are available on line free of charge in modern and original form anyway, I wonder why he's charging $7.50 for it?

Ah, well, it's not the original book he's selling but his own working of the tricks it contains along with his notes on them. The orignal book is very heavy going, and for a couple of quid, the bit of brain marked CUPS is whispering "buy it, buy it..."

Hee hee - C.U.P.S. rules OK ?
(go on, you know you want to and you know you'll do it soon so why not do it now, my pretty...... )

It's a great book, choc-abloc full of effects still in existent (Grandma's Necklace for example).

Even if you don't learn a great deal from the book, it is an extremely interesting read from the historical aspect, and just goes to show that there is nothing much new.

It is a beautiful book to have on your shelf, but don't just buy it. read it too...

bananafish wrote:It's a great book, choc-abloc full of effects still in existent (Grandma's Necklace for example).

Even if you don't learn a great deal from the book, it is an extremely interesting read from the historical aspect, and just goes to show that there is nothing much new.

It is a beautiful book to have on your shelf, but don't just buy it. read it too...

do you mean Great Scott Magic's ebook or The Discoverie itself? I agree that the latter is a top read. Just the vitriolic way he goes after the papists seems very brave even now.

You may be interested to learn that Discoverie was not the first book in the English language to explain conjuring tricks. Thomas Hill published 'Naturall & Artificial Conclusions' in 1581. This edition is in the Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California.Purchased from Sotherby's in April 1925 for £460 or $2, 300. The British Museum has a copy of the 2nd edition(1586) For details see The Magic Circular August 1952, pages 308 to 317 and The MC October 1952 pages 24 to 26.
The book had a number of editions; one of which as far as I can trace has no copies. It contained tricks like How To Turn Water Into Wine, To Make an Apple Move On A Table, How to Cut an Apple into many pieces without harming the skin or paring, How To write letters on the Egge Shell that the same letters may appeare within the Egge, and even To make Roses and other Flowers that be red to become white etc.
Allen Tipton.

Cheers Allen. That's an interesting and diverse (or divers) selection. They were pretty advanced at the old gaffs and gags even then.

I'm just about to buy the great scot's e-book of tricks - anyone read it?

d

Allen Tipton wrote::) You may be interested to learn that Discoverie was not the first book in the English language to explain conjuring tricks. Thomas Hill published 'Naturall & Artificial Conclusions' in 1581. This edition is in the Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California.Purchased from Sotherby's in April 1925 for £460 or $2, 300. The British Museum has a copy of the 2nd edition(1586) For details see The Magic Circular August 1952, pages 308 to 317 and The MC October 1952 pages 24 to 26.
The book had a number of editions; one of which as far as I can trace has no copies. It contained tricks like How To Turn Water Into Wine, To Make an Apple Move On A Table, How to Cut an Apple into many pieces without harming the skin or paring, How To write letters on the Egge Shell that the same letters may appeare within the Egge, and even To make Roses and other Flowers that be red to become white etc.
Allen Tipton.

isn’t it interesting to see how alchemy had an influence on magic back then.

chemicals, of different kinds used to manifest things magical.. like the egg trick.

there are sections in Discoverie regarding alchemy and hwo they defrauded their marks

do you know anyone in UK who has performed any of the tricks in Discoverie as they are described?

d

If this sort of thing interests you, Richard Kaufman´s book Cardmagic has a section on the card methods in Discoverie.

Since this book is in facimile format, it looks like he has just scanned the relevant pages from Scot´s book. I´ll stick with my copy...

BTW, I got to read a first edition when I worked at the National Library of Scotland. There´s an account of it on the Genii forum if you do a search.

Take care, Ian

Allen Tipton wrote::) You may be interested to learn that Discoverie was not the first book in the English language to explain conjuring tricks. Thomas Hill published 'Naturall & Artificial Conclusions' in 1581. This edition is in the Henry Huntington Library, San Marino, California.Purchased from Sotherby's in April 1925 for £460 or $2, 300. The British Museum has a copy of the 2nd edition(1586) For details see The Magic Circular August 1952, pages 308 to 317 and The MC October 1952 pages 24 to 26.
The book had a number of editions; one of which as far as I can trace has no copies. It contained tricks like How To Turn Water Into Wine, To Make an Apple Move On A Table, How to Cut an Apple into many pieces without harming the skin or paring, How To write letters on the Egge Shell that the same letters may appeare within the Egge, and even To make Roses and other Flowers that be red to become white etc.
Allen Tipton.

I'd love to have a read of this book!! I wonder how they were performed and what the patter will have been like. Fascinating stuff, thanks Allen.