Passing Through
By Jim Gerrish
I promised Spellbinder he
could publish this rope and silk routine in this month’s
Wizards’ Journal #11, but I’m not too happy parting
with the secret. I’m still using it in my shows, as are a
number of other Wiz Kids who have grown into Wiz Men and are
still doing magic on a regular basis. Therefore, I’ll spill
the beans, but no pictures and no DVDs, so it will only be of
value to those who can read and follow written instructions. You
really shouldn't buy this trick. Wait until I'm dead and gone.
Effects: The full routine
has three parts. Part 1 is the Dr. Raymond Beebe Bisect-U
effect from the Steward James’ Encyclopedia of Rope
Tricks. The rope is placed behind your back and two
spectators are given the ends. They pull the rope through your
body from back to front.
Part 2 is Harold
Rice’s Dissolvo, found in Rice’s Encyclopedia
of Silk Magic. A silk is tied onto the rope (after doing
part 1 above) and when tugged slightly, the knotted silk
penetrates the rope.
So the question presented
to the audience, is: “Does the rope pass through my body, or
does my body pass through the rope? Let’s try another
experiment.”
Part 3, my own effect,
then begins. This time you start with the rope in front of your
body and you ask the spectators to hold the ends of the rope
again. You pull two more silks (of different colors) to add to
the silk already in your hand. You give each spectator a choice
of a silk. Whichever silk they choose is tied onto the rope
nearest to them. The remaining silk is held by you in front of
your body.
Now you walk forward,
apparently through the rope. They see the silk get smaller and
smaller as it apparently passes into and through your body,
because when you step away, the rope is now on the other side of
your body, complete with the silk still knotted in the center.
I’ve become fond of
adding a fourth ending, which I will not explain in this article,
but which you can easily locate elsewhere in The Wizards’
Journals. I remove the three knotted silks from the rope and tie
the rope around my neck (using the Tenkai Rope Through Neck explained
in Eleazar Goodenough’s Necktie Paper Tear section of his book Tear-Able Magic and
also explained in the Stewart James’ Encyclopedia of
Rope Tricks).
With the rope around my
neck, I stuff the two end silks, still knotted, into my pants
pockets, as in Eleazar Goodenough’s Every Century Silks in The Wizards’ Journal #8. I untie the
knot in the center silk, and then re-tie it around the ends of
the ropes coming from my neck. Once again I hand the ends of the
ropes to the two spectators, but instead of letting them pull the
rope through my neck, I retain a grip on the rope ends nearest my
neck and work the penetration myself. The rope penetrates my neck
AND the center silk, the center silk vanishes immediately
afterwards, and I toss the rope forward so the two spectators can
now pull on it freely. At the same time, I work Eleazar’s Every Century Silk ending (the regular version, not the X-treme
one!) and pull all three silks, still knotted in the centers, but
now also tied end to end, from my pants pockets.
(Note: The section above
written in red contains deceptive statements and outright lies
and may be considered false advertising by those who purchase the
article. Caveat Emptor! Let the buyer beware! Jim Gerrish)
WJ11-03
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