Conjuring Credits

The Origins of Wonder

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One-ahead Principle

The one-ahead principle was the predominant method of a three-pile divination detailed in Horatio Galasso's Giochi di carte bellissimi de regola, e di memoria, 1593, p. 59 of the Pieper translation. Galasso's text was translated and published in Gibecière, Vol. 2 No. 2, Summer 2007 pp. 15-150.

Reinhard Müller reports finding this principle published seventy-six years later in a German text: the anonymous Hocus Pocus - kürtzweilige approbirte Kahrten-Künste, second edition, 1669. From then on, it became a staple of conjuring texts, appearing in Richard Neve's A Merry Companion, 1716, p. 113, Jacques Ozanam’s Récréations mathématiques et physiques, expanded 1723 edition, p. 150 of the Pieper translation (translated edition published in Gibecière, Vol. 6 No. 1, Winter 2011, pp. 79-156), etc.