One answer would be that they already knew, or subsequently discovered, how the full-blown Indian rope trick was supposed to look, and drew on this knowledge when embroidering their accounts.

Peter Lamont has argued that there are no accurate references to the trick predating 1890, and that later stage magic performances of the trick were inspired by Wilkie's account. If you would like us to replace the goods with another size or colour, we will charge carriage on the replacement. He demanded that "the rope must be thrown into the air and defy the force of gravity, while someone climbs it and disappears. So long as you down tell anyone about the engineering you will be able to repeat this magic again and again! Songling claims the trick was a favorite of the White Lotus society and that the magician must have learnt it from them (or they from him), though he gives no indication where (or how) he learnt this.

Online you’ll find countless tutorials and YouTube clips, which explain – step-by-step – how to do the rope tricks above, as well as many more. Looking for something a little thicker, perhaps to make your own rope tricks such as Professor's Nightmare? In fact, when an audience sees the Magic Rope go from flexible to rigid with the snap of a finger and back to flexible again, it will be hard not to be surprised.

As to the falling of the pieces of the climber, according to an Indian barrister-at-law who saw a performance about 1875 which included this feature, it appears to have been produced very largely by acting and sound effects. Nobody ever claimed this reward and he considered the full trick to be a myth, never successfully demonstrated. Held at one angle it looks and feels like an ordinary rope, but with a twist of the wrist the internal plastic connectors align and the rope stands rigid like a stick! If you receive your goods and believe them to be faulty, please contact us straight away with a brief description of the problem.

In 1936, Jasper Maskelyne stated that he had "perfected half of an Indian rope-trick"; he could make the rope rise into the air in an open space and have a boy climb it but could not make the boy disappear. Stiff Rope is about 30 inches long and made with quite thick red rope that makes it visible from the distance. The rope has a weighted hook, and an invisible thread which is draped over the wire above; when the rope is tossed upward the thread is used to pull it and hook it in place. The magician wears loose baggy clothing, in which are concealed the "body parts" that he tosses down. He said that the descriptions of the trick in Yule's editions (1870s) of Marco Polo's book are not in the body of the work, but in a footnote by Yule, and only refer to these non-classic accounts.

In 1934 the Occult Committee of The Magic Circle, convinced the trick did not exist, offered a large reward to anyone who could perform it in the open air. If you have any questions or would like advice on the best rope for your magic tricks, feel free to get in touch. After several decades, what might have originally been a simple trick had become a highly elaborate performance in their minds. The fact that Shankara referred to the trick's method was pointed out in 1934 in a discussion of the Indian rope trick in the Indian press. According to that miniseries, the tour travelled the world investigating historical tricks, and while in India they travelled to Agra, where they recreated the trick.In his book on the topic, Peter Lamont claimed the story of the trick resulted from a hoax created by John Elbert Wilkie while working at the Chicago Tribune. Pu Songling records a version in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (1740) which he claims to have witnessed personally.