Paul Morley is one of the UK’s leading Gospel magicians, so we’re excited to offer his instructional rope DVD – the first in a line of exclusive DVDs! A horizontal wire is stretched above the site, anchored at ground points of higher elevation, rather than obvious nearby structures.

Robert Elliot of the London Magic Circle, when offering a substantial reward in the 1930s for an outdoor performance, found it necessary to define the trick. Other illusionists have successfully staged the trick out of doors, but under those circumstances, a demonstration of pole balancing has been all they could offer to the spectators. It’s also crucial that your hands are positioned correctly and movements need to appear natural and irrelevant to the act. In his book on the topic, Peter Lamont claimed the story of the trick resulted from a hoax created by John Elbert Wilkie while working at the Chicago Tribune.According to Bertram "none of them laid any claim to being able to perform it, and when they were questioned upon the subject, disclaimed any idea of ever having seen, and in many cases, having heard of it. He explained Melton's account of seeing the limbs "creep together again" (see above under "accounts") as being the result of contortionists' techniques. However, the courtyard had been filled with dense smoke and when he had developed the photographs they revealed that "neither the juggler, nor the boy, nor the rope had moved at all. When a magician acts out the visible catch of an imaginary deck of cards thrown by a spectator, or throws a ball in the air where it vanishes, the appearance or disappearance really occurs at the location of the magician's hand, but to most spectators (two out of three in actual testing [55]) the magic appears to occur in mid-air. Liros Magic Sheet Rope Specially developed for main and jib sheets on dinghies, sportsboats and catamarans.

Huddleston writing in Nature, claimed to have spent more than thirty years in India and knew many of the best conjurors in the country but not one of them could demonstrate the trick. In 1917, Lieutenant Frederick William Holmes stated that whilst on his veranda with a group of officers in Kirkee, he had observed the trick being performed by an old man and young boy. The magician's son climbs the rope, vanishes from sight, and then (supposedly) tosses down a peach, before being "caught by the Garden's guards" and "killed", with his dismembered body falling from above in the traditional manner.

Skilled acrobats could make this quick "climb" look very effective until the climber's feet are at or even above the lifter's head. It has always been the outdoor disappearance of the climber, away from trees and structures, which has led to claims the illusion is "humanly impossible". John Keel reports that he was told the secret of the trick in 1955 from an aged mystic who claimed to have performed it in the past. e. red, green, yellow, white, harlequin) and, made from a luxurious cotton-acrylic blend, they’re soft and flexible enough to make your rope tricks a success. The real challenge was to perform the full trick including the disappearance of the boy in broad daylight, outside in the open air.

Perhaps more importantly, he found the more spectacular accounts were only given when the incident lay decades in the past. If a ball of cord is thrown upwards, one end being retained in the hand, the ball rapidly decreases in size as it rises. The fact that Shankara referred to the trick's method was pointed out in 1934 in a discussion of the Indian rope trick in the Indian press.One answer would be that they already knew, or subsequently discovered, how the full-blown Indian rope trick was supposed to look, and drew on this knowledge when embroidering their accounts.

Looking for something a little thicker, perhaps to make your own rope tricks such as Professor's Nightmare?It was examined by Robert Elliot, who stated it was not a demonstration of the Indian rope trick but an example of a balancing trick on a bamboo pole. Many wizards worked out stage versions, but to date, no magician has done it in the open air, away from trees or buildings.