Cup game
The cup game is one of the oldest described magic tricks . Small spheres or balls move back and forth under several (two to three) cups or penetrate them. Often at the end a large ball or a fruit appears under one of the cups.
Even if the cup game has parallels to the shell game , in the field of magic it is only used for entertainment.
history
One of the earliest textual mentions of the cup game can be found in Seneca (around 1 to 65 AD): “ Effice, ut quomodo fiat intelligam: perdidi usum ” (German: “Show me how the trick is done and I'll have it Lost interest in it ”). One of the first more detailed explanations of the feat is shown in Reginald Scot's 1584 book The Discoverie of Witchcraft , a book that is not considered a spellbook . It was intended as an educational pamphlet. Only the 13th chapter it treats the feats of former juggler .
It was not until 1693 that the book Hocus Pocus Junior found a meaningful description for the magician to present the trick as a magical feat.
The cup game is one of the art pieces in the most visual arts have been processed, for example in the jugglers of Hieronymus Bosch . A detailed documentation of the visual representation of the cup game and its demonstrators can be found in the book The Oldest Trick in the Book by Robert Read, which was published in 2014 in the Volker Huber edition.
literature
- Kurt Volkmann: The cup game. Representations of the magician in the fine arts. The 15th and 16th centuries . Magic Circle of Germany, Düsseldorf 1954, DNB 455291810 .
- Robert Read: Oldest Trick in the Book . Edition Volker Huber, Offenbach am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-9815695-1-3 (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann Beckmann: Contributions to the history of inventions . tape 4 . Verlag Paul Gotthelf Kummer, Leipzig 1799, p. 76 , footnote 31 ( digitized version in the Google book search).