The new April edition of Genii has an awesome article on the Hooker Card Rise. You'll get to learn everything about this unbelievable effect...except the secret.

I know from past info and this article that to perform and set up the Hooker Card Rise takes a lot of work. Does anyone know if this is scheduled to be performed again...maybe on the East Coast.

I would pay double to see the Hooker Card Rise live. Maybe some day.

If anyone on the Café has saw it live...chime in with your thoughts.

Rich B.

If you are interested in Hooker's rising cards you should read the only book length work written on Hooker including a description of how it could very likely be done. Several people who have seen the performance, including long time pros, believe that the method described is very close to what is really going on.

http://www.lybrary.com/samuel-hooker-rising-cards-p-680.html

Wasshuber's eBook will only waste your money on misinformation and baloney. No one with any real knowledge of the show believes that he has come even remotely close to the method. In fact, the ostensible "secrets" he's revealing are a lot of ridiculous hooey all bundled together in an e-book so he can make money on a subject he knows nothing about, and the performance of a routine he could not even be bothered to watch when it was performed last year.
Some contributors to his e-book have subsequently asked to have their material removed, and he has refused. That's how highly they think of it.
Don't waste your money.

Listen to Richard. But get this month's Genii. The most important thing about Hooker Card Rise is the flow and performance of it. To be honest, it is wasted on laymen. You could make the same effect on them with a piece of thread.

But as magician everytime you come up with a solution, the next step takes away that solution. it is obvious that many different methods are used.

Having seen it, I can say that was neat. I wish I knew more about the methods just so I could further appreciate the ingeniuty of Dr. Hooker. But I believe the right thing is being done to keep the methods covert as Hooker intended.

Richard

At the LA Conference someone quipped, "After this weekend there are 250 people who now know more about the Hooker Card Rise than Wasshuber ever will." Technically a few hundred more if you count the public shows the week before.

If you haven't seen it done, you can't possibly have any idea what you are talking about.

Brad

Are you saying that you can duplicate the performance using a piece of thread?

Carlo

No what I am saying is to a laymen without the inside knowledge a lot of the Hooker Card Rise inner secrets are lost. Mike Caveney expressed the same sentiment at the conference. Robbi Gobbit was a guest of the Hooker family. He was sitting there with his mouth open (most of us were also) and the Hooker family as laymen just kind of went "So the crd rises and another rises..big deal." That is the point.

I do not have any idea how it all works nor do I care. I would only want to know so I could better appreciate Dr. Hooker's inguenity.

Richard

Hear hear, Kaufman is spewing his venom about my research and work on Hooker and he hasn't even read my ebook. So let me put a few things straight here in public because all Kaufman tries to do is to destroy my business for his own pitty and crooked sense of loyalty to Steinmeyer who he coerced away from Magic Magazine.

1) All contributors to my ebook saw the ebook before release and all commented very positively about it. Everything reproduced was done with explicit permission.

2) The Hooker family gave their ok and contributed personal information. They also saw the ebook and commented highly positively about it.

3) Several recognized magicians bought my ebook and commented highly positively about it. Not just about the tremendous amount of work I put into the ebook but also about the methods described. These were private comments to me and I cannot reproduce them here, but I am sure some will eventually come forward.

4) This is the only published work that makes an educated and informed attempt to explain the method. There is nothing else published on the method.

5) Several people who collaborated with me on this ebook and on the methods have seen either the 1993, the 2007 or both performances. It is true that I have not seen a performance but I have studied this effect for 3 years and I have access to people who have seen it as well as personal notes. One can study an effect intelligently without having seen it because there are very detailed descriptions of the effect. And since I didn't dream this up alone in a dark room, but it was a collaborative effort of many, of which many have seen a performance, Kaufman's argument is silly.

6) I have built a prototype which reproduces the effect exactly and which is described in detail with photos in the ebook. To me this is a clear proof of the method. At least it is a feasible method obeying all boundary conditions of the effect. Nothing of that kind has every been published. Of course, this must upset some who try now with all their might and all their unfair, childish and silly tactics to prevent you from reading this ebook.

7) It is also silly to state "I couldn't be bothered to see a performance". This is nothing but a stupid insult because what does Kaufman know about my personal and professional commitments? How dare he even suggests such a notion. I was personally invited by the Hooker family to see their family show. I tried everything possible to make it happen but it was simply not in the cards. At the time of the performance I was in the air between Australia and Portugal. However, I did connect the Hooker family with Roberto Giobbi so that they could invite him to the performance.

Anybody who has an interest in Hooker and his rising cards will love my ebook, even if you do not agree with the method proposed, because there is so much more in it, from details about his scientific work, to a lot more on how it all ended up with Gaughan and many more tidbits and nuggets of information.

Don't let yourself be schoolmastered by somebody who has not read my ebook and who has an agenda against me.

Chris, depending on what you mean by "published", still don't forget my document. Even though in the meanwhile I either changed my mind on a few things I wrote, or else improved on some of the ideas, it is still an "educated" attempt to explain the method. And your last theory is very heavily based on it.

Carlo

Carlo, since your document and ideas are already part of my ebook I did not consider it something else published on the method. Strictly speaking you are certainly correct that your document has to be considered as 'published' also in its standalone form.

But as you know your document has been prompted by my research and ebook. So I consider it part of the overall effort to which many more besides you and me have contributed in a number of ways. Outside of this effort that I initiated nothing else has ever been published.

Clearly, you weren't there. If you had been, you would have noticed that in the post performance discussions almost no one could completely agree on everything that happened. So much so, that one noted magic historian quipped, "Well, this is proof that police reports should never rely on eye witness evidence again."

Of course he was exaggerating, but to a point: Even though some of the smartest and most observant people in magic were there, even though they were discussing what we saw only moments before - accounts differed substantially.

So, the detailed descriptions on which you have based your study, Chris, are largely worthless as none of them are definitive.

We all know what happens when we build on a rocky foundation....

C'mon, admit it. You just wanted to cash in on the Hooker thing. Why should Jim and Johnny get all the credit? They just invested oodles of money and thousands of hours. It's a free market. You should get your fair share too, right Chris?

Brad

Brad,

Think about the following for a second. I am sure you are an intelligent lad. When I started my research on Hooker, there was no knowledge of Gaughan giving another performance. So why would I spend weeks and months in the library, weeks and months corresponding with colleagues and weeks and months working out a method if it would be about the money? That would surely be a very bad investment. If you read my ebook, which you obviously have not, then you will clearly understand my motivation. It is certainly not money as the whole Lybrary.com thing is not about money. Perhaps this is hard for you to understand but that's how it is.

Of course, Lybrary is a business and I am trying to feed my family. I expect a fair compensation for my honest work. Not more and not less. But it is not about the money. It is about magic which I love and of which I know a great deal about.

It is true that once I heard about the performances that would take place in November 2007 I finished up the almost ready ebook and released it. But that was not a cold calculation, it was purely a coincidence that any half decent business owner would take advantage of. The point is that I already spent 3 years of research and the ebook was for the most part finished. Without Gaughan's reenactment it would have appeared maybe 2 months later.

Now let me address your argument that 'the descriptions of spectators are largely worthless'. The emphasis should be on LARGELY. Yes, it is true that many accounts verbal or in print are indeed worthless. But as a good scientist and scholar you can triangulate the truth. You can make educated and intelligent inferences taking all available information into account. That is why I have spent 3 years pulling together all available facts. And there are some very good descriptions and observations which have not been available to most people, to which I had access, which are quite worthwhile to be studied. Of course, if you only rely on information coming from Steinmeyer and associates or Mulholland and associates, all people who know or knew the secret and who would be very careful to reveal any clues, then of course you can't expect to get anywhere.

Compare my work with the work of a historian, an archaeologist etc. These are all people who have not been 'there' but they can still find out a lot and intelligently infer the truth or the very likely truth. It is called science. I am a scientist and I have applied the scientific method to this problem. I built a functioning prototype. Scientists understand this as proof that the method I describe is A method to do the Hooker rising cards. It is not necessarily THE method used. But who knows, the method I describe could possibly be even better and more practical than the original method. Hooker's mystery would then have inspired progress in magic, exactly what he tried to achieve.

Why don't you film a performance of your method, send it to some of the noted observers who have contributed to your study, and have them issue an honest comparison between yours and what they witnessed first hand?

Brad

Brad,

I have planned to tape the operation of my prototype. It is a matter of time when this will happen. The video clip will then be added to the ebook. However, the description in the ebook is already very detailed and with photos that it is no problem at all to form an opinion or even build your own working version.

And I am sure that eventually some readers of the ebook as well as contributors will come forward stating their honest and informed opinion. Time is on my side. Eventually the silly comments from Kaufman and friends will reveal themselves as what they are.

You are making a mistake here Chris, a big mistake.

Carlo

Carlo, sorry to disagree with you, but I have read everything in print on Hooker and this statement is born from that knowledge.

If you're really interested in current theory of how this effect was done, you don't need to buy anything, you just need to visit the Genii forum where there's pages and pages of posts on how folks thought it was done, the most advanced of those theories coming from folks like Carlo.

Putting aside the many utterly foolish and self-serving things which Wasshuber has written in this thread, he then accuses me of "coercing" Jim Steinmeyer away from MAGIC magazine.

What the hell does that mean?

I just spoke with someone THAT REALLY KNOWS... he visited the family and looked over the equipment BEFORE GAUGHAN... I didn't ask him to explain any of it as I want to keep the memory of the performance in my mind without knowing any of the secrets. Also Gaughan told me there were addede effects they left out as they didn't want to show to run too long.

I thought that only a few had access to the hooker rising cards! I have a few pictures of it on 2 very old magazines here on my room... Sure looks amazing! I think I would not want to know the secrets... if it looked so magical, the better would be apreciate the effect! Anyway, I wish I could have seen it