The Genii Forum

Hello,

We've found a number of books in our magic library that are believed to be used for book test routines, but can find no further information on them. The only mention here on the forums is by Dick Christian back in 2008 and he would surely know what he's talking about. Unfortunately he passed before publishing his encyclopedia on book tests etc. and is no longer around to answer questions.

Did anyone ever get his list of known hybrid/natural forcing books? He apparently had such lists and sent them to those asking.

• Stigma by Williams Forrest (Crown Publishers Inc, 1957)
• The Victors by Clement Pollock (Random House, 1956)
• A Cup of Tea for Mr. Thorgill by Storm Jameson (Harper, 1957)

These are the three books we've found. Does anyone know anything about them?

Any help would be much appreciated!

Best regards,

Markus

Max Maven identified and used a natural forcing book in his Videomind tapes and DVDs (Lawrence Sanders, Third Deadly Sin.)

I want to say there was a discussion on this subject in the old Electronic Grymoire discussion group years ago, but I don't have it archived and don't remember the details.

That is interesting, will have to track down those videos, we might even have them.

I noticed all three books were published in 56–57. One hypothesis is that they are found together in the library because someone at some distant point in the past bought all three based on some/several published work(s) that suggest these specific three, or something along those lines.

Would really like to get my hands on Dick Christian's list…

I don't know who came up with this idea, it may have been a British magician, but any novel has a finite number of characters' names. You go through the book and make a list. The spectator opens to any page and thinks of a name he finds there. Using a progressive anagram, you then identify the name.

I recall this as proposed by Arthur C. F. Carter, specific to the Dennis Wheatley novel To The Devil A Daughter. No anagram required, as there are only four names in the entire book. Appeared in Magigram in the 1970s.

Max Maven wrote:I recall this as proposed by Arthur C. F. Carter, specific to the Dennis Wheatley novel To The Devil A Daughter. No anagram required, as there are only four names in the entire book. Appeared in Magigram in the 1970s.

As I was reading down the posts, I was going to mention the Arthur Carter routine, but Max beat me to it. The four names Carter gives are:
JULES
JOHN
MOLLY
CHRISTINA

However a number of other names do also appear, as was pointed out a year later by John Burbeck. Arthur Carter added that the odds of the participant picking one of the above names were stacked in your favour.