Sub Rosa : A utility move and applications

Sub Rosa is a wonderfully deceptive and versatile technique that you can learn in seconds and master in minutes. It’s simple and direct, suitable for stage, parlour, and close-up, and is equally at home in magic and in mentalism. It has dozens of applications, such as:

• Card or Bill in Cigarette
• Coin in Bottle
• Linking Finger Rings
• Paper to Bills effects
• colour separations
• Colour-Changing Knives
• predictions and divinations
• paddle routines
• Torn and Restored effects
• Brema Nut and similar

and countless others. Over sixty effects of all kinds are included:

• predictions and divinations
• a card revelation
• coincidence effects
• key bending
• card matching and a date revelation
• design duplication
• transpositions and transformations
• book tests
• Seven Keys and a Watch Box
• a headline prediction
• spirit writing and spirit photography
• a Linking Pins finale

and much more. Many effects have fully scripted presentations: straight ones, humorous ones, even a couple of Bizarre ones. Themes include: 

• an experiment in an ESP lab
• tattoos and voodoo
• dead celebrities
• a dead clown
• the magic postal system
• shopping for gifts
• buying groceries
• a murderer
• a would-be student of divination
• good luck charms, amulets and feng shui
• a night on the town
• what’s for dinner
• holidays
• school for spies
• a murder mystery
• a game show

and more. With the Sub Rosa technique, you can often use inexpensive, ordinary items instead of specialized apparatus to accomplish similar effects. Add it to your arsenal and open up a new world of strong yet easy-to-do magic.

“... if everyone knew great magic could be done this easily, we would be out of business. Well done.”

—Jim Byrnes