The Devil’s Card Rise by Thayer Quality Magic, Owen Magic Supreme, Len Sewell

The most convincing switching device I have ever seen is the amazing Devil’s Mail Box by Thayer and later by Owen’s.  It is so clean you really can’t believe anything has happened.  After the initial success of the original design Thayer released a new version attributed to Len Sewell and called The Devil’s Card Rise (sometimes the Mysterious Card Rise).  This new device really is a marvel.

When I received this item it was a little worse for wear and did not include any instructions so I created my own based on the the original Devil’s Mail Box instructions, the advert and Thayer’s Rising Card instructions in Vol. 2 of Glenn Gravatt’s wonderful compilation of Thayer instruction sheets.  Dr. Albo shows the prop in a video for the Ultimate Thayer, but doesn’t actually perform the card rise feature or mention any specifics.  That being said after an afternoon playing with various approaches I’m confident I am very close.

In the effect below I’ve changed the description slightly from the advert copy to make it more precise what is happening when you actually perform it.  Because I have not seen the original instructions I am not sure how they have the three cards chosen (but obviously they are forced).  As we all know dealer copy can be very imprecise when it comes to explaining what the audience sees so I am not too concerned that I have explained more closely what actually happens.

Includes:

• The Devil’s Card Rise.
• All necessary Cards and envelopes.
• Special something to help with the card rising.
• Video instructions to reset the prop.

Notice: Use your own wand.

Notice: this prop is missing some blue and red trim half way up on the sides and one of the green eyes for the devil is missing (you can barely even see the eyes).  Also on the bottom of the base for access to the gimmick a large hole was fixed with a piece of plastic as the original piece of wood had been removed when I received it.  These are both cosmetic to the prop and as you can tell from the photos and video it still looks and works perfectly fine.

Effect: A deck of cards is freely shown to be all different and three cards are chosen after the spectator cuts the deck anywhere.  Seven more cards are added to these three chosen and the spectator shuffles all ten and places them into an ordinary envelope.  There is no question all three chosen cards are in the envelope with the other seven.

The envelope is placed inside the neat open-sided stand and at no time does it leave their sight.

As the spectator watches all three cards slowly rise from the top of the stand. The magician then removes the envelope from the stand and you can clearly see the exact same envelope is removed and it is handed to the spectator.

To their astonishment, there are only seven cards left in the envelope and their selected ones are missing 🙂

This prop can also be used for  same range of effects that could be performed with the original Devil’s Mail Box.

Found something wrong? Help us improve things by clicking here!