Does anyone have any clues to we're I can learn the Hindu Rope Trick I have a great routine for it with Rocky Raccoon but I have no idea were to learn it. Any books or websites???

Are you talking about the trick where the conjurer takes a large ball of rope, fastens one end to a sack, and tosses the other into the air. Instead of falling, the ropes keeps ascending until its upper end is lost to sight, while its lower end becomes taut. The performer’s boy helper climbs lightly up the rope until he too disappears. When he is ordered down, his voice is heard, refusing. Angered, the man climbs after him with a knife between his teeth. Soon, to the horror of the crowd, blood and pieces of the boy’s body shower down. The magician returns and throws a sheet over the dismembered corpse. In a moment, he removes the sheet and reveals the boy smiling and well?


kOnO

That would be a cool trick KoNo. Work it out and I'll buy one! I want it totally impromptu, and designed for close up.

The only Indian Rope Trick I know of is similar in essence to described above, while there was less bloodshed, and have never heard of a source to learn it. I think it was more of a hoax than a trick.....

Through a rather thorough, and short, Internet journey I have found no mention of this trick being done by magicians. Only a historical(?) thing. If it's what you want to do, work out a way to accomplish it. Oddly enough kOnO's description seems accurate...... We do some odd things to please a crowd.

Could you explain the effect?

Can the boy be a non-stooge volunteer from the audience?

There is a video lurking around showing a very amazing version done out of doors at the beach. The boy climbs up about 1/3rd of the way, then comes down. But the rope going up 15 or so feet and staying rigid is a BAFFLER.

Now, with Rocky, there is a cheap version that I use as a gag available from most dealers... it's a mechanical rope about 4 feet long.

I think Pete is talking about a version done by the Shankar family in Udupi, South India, at a magic festival a few years ago. The same trick is occasionally done by another magician in the same town, Prahlad Acharya. Without tipping the method, I can say that it is a non-trivial feat!

The book by Peter Lamont gives a reasonably convincing case that the idea of the Indian Rope Trick is a western confabulation from the early 20th century.

That is the trick I'm talking about with the boy does anyone know if they are selling it or is it located in any perticular book?

No, they are not selling it and it has not been published.
Ideas have been floated over the decades about how to do it (see Peter Lamont's book) but most of them are not practical.

If you have a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of help, you can figure out how that version is done... but it probably isn't worth all the trouble. He did it as an answer to a challenge of a large monetary prize, but the offering party failed to deliver.

He was heartbroken as he had hoped to win the money to get his children out of the poverty level and to a university.

Midwest:

Someone somewhere makes a rigid rising rope from basket illusion. I've seen it online, but can't remember where. If I locate it, I'll PM you. The rope only rises 2 - 3 feet, but that might be enough to do what you want with Rocky.

Jim

For some brief history, check this link out!

http://home.uchicago.edu/~sspalshi/jadoo/magicpaper.doc

Just to clarify this. My understanding, having spend quite some time discussing this with the Shankars, is that they created the effect, in order to have a centrepiece for their Gili Gili magic festival in Udupi in 1997. The Shankars are a family of stage magicians, middle-class Brahmins, who both Pete and I count as our friends. The legend of the Indian Rope Trick is that it was traditionally performed by street magicians and so the actual performance was done by a Delhi street magician, Ishamuddin. The Shankars, being charitable (and really nice) people, gave him the effect afterwards, and it certainly has been a big boost to his fortunes. I think he has performed it once or twice in Delhi, at big corporate/diplomatic parties.

As for the reward: the “occult committee” of the Magic Circle in 1934 offered a reward of 500 guineas to any magician who could come forward and present it for them, in the open air, the rope being thrown up, staying there, the boy climbing up it and -- the crucial thing -- that he vanished at the top. There challenge was actually taken up shortly afterwards by a Plymouth magician, Arthur Derby, who worked as “Karachi”, but his crude version didn’t have the all-important vanish, and so he didn’t get the money.

I am pretty sure that the Shankars never attempted to claim the prize. Even if it was still extant, their version too would not have qualified. I don’t know whether Ishammudin has ever tried but he would get short shrift.

The difficult thing, of course is to do the vanish of the boy in the open air, and surrounded. I don’t know enough about big illusions design to know whether it is possible, although I presume that with enough pyrotechnic misdirection you might get away with it.

The vanish of the boy out doors could probably be worked out AT NIGHT... near building or tree, with pyro or smoke? But would probably be hardly worth the effort.

No matter, the version we have seen as mentioned above, IMHO, was terrific, well done and one of the best things I have seen like it.

It might be worth it to claim the MC reward - maybe on the centenary!
If you are near a few trees, all kinds of other possibilities open up for raising the rope.