THE RAINBOW KNIFE A Stand-Up Knife Routine In my book Sonata, | described a color-changing knife routine that | called Rainbow. This one is totally different in effect, circumstances and style. | hope you enjoy it, as do the spectators and myself when performing it— feel it and experience it intensely. Effect A deck of cards is shuffled by a spectator. After asking another spectator to cut the cards, you bring out a white pocketknife, open the blade, and hand it to him, saying, “You will cut it better with this” [laughs]. After this unusual and amusing bit of byplay, you perform a card trick in which the knife locates a selected card through radiesthesia. You retrieve the knife from the spectator and, once the blade is closed, hold it vertically in the left hand. Then you cover the knife with the empty right hand and, upon removing the hand, the knife has changed to green on both sides. You cover the knife again for an instant and, to everyone's surprise, it turns red on both sides. Both hands are empty, except for the knife. You then put the knife inside your fist and, when you open your hand, the knife is found to be white on both sides once again. You make a fist, with the knife inside, and when you open your hand, without the other hand coming anywhere near it, the knife has turned multicolored, like a rainbow, on both sides! When you are about to hand the rainbow knife to a spectator and he attempts to take it, it vanishes into thin air! Patter Here are my introductory words for the trick, delivered after a divination using a pocketknife. With this patter | attempt to convey to the audience my personal vision of the art of magic. | can assure you it has the marvelous result of making the spectators appreciate the successive color changes of the knife in a very poetic way. Furthermore, | have observed that the attitude of the spectators from that point on, andThe Rainbow Knife throughout the rest of the session, is more open and surrendered to the fascination and beauty of our art. “Yesterday I was with a few friends in a country house in El Escorial. It had rained, and the sun suddenly began to shine, I leaned out of the window and called everyone: “Look, look! The rainbow, the rainbow!” We all watched, mesmerized... except for one in the group who, while we were enjoying the view, said to us, ‘That's a refraction. I have studied that. That's because the sun's rays diffract themselves and the colors have different wavelengths that...’ We all looked at him as if telling him, ‘Don’t be silly!’ He finally shut up and was able to start enjoying with us the beauty and the magic of the rainbow. A 5-year old kid, the son of my friend Julia, said to her: ‘Mom, let's catch it.’ But she stopped him and said to him, ‘The rainbow cannot be touched. It can't be caught...’ ‘But, Mom, it’s right there. I can see it.’ ‘Yes, honey, it's there, it's real... but it's an illusion...’ And we all continued to admire and enjoy the illusion, so real, of the oh so beautiful rainbow. That's what I think often happens with magic. Magic, like the rainbow, is an illusion. It's not only reality. If you are out in the field and try to get close enough to catch it, you'll never touch it, because it fades away. It does exist, but it's an illusion. In addition to all that, everybody knows that, as in magic, there is a rational explanation (even if magic doesn’t appear to have one), but the thing to do at that moment is to enjoy the illusion. When I zvatch magic, I want to enjoy the effect. If I start to think, “This should be because...” the illusion is gone. I would be missing the magic. So now I'm going to show you an illusion: an effect with a sunbeam. Since I didn't have one handy and today has been cloudy, the nearest one, if there are any, is very far away. Therefore, 1 will do it with this pocketknife, which is white and long like a sunbeam. I would like you to see that it’s very clean. Well, sunbeams are always clean unless it's foggy. In this case it's clean on both sides. Look! It's magical: it doesn’t burn my hands. I would also like another person to touch it. If we put the sunbeam here... See how interesting: a little bit of magic and we see colors on the white. Green, green! ... Or perhaps... Red, red! .. because all the colors are contained in the... White, white! But think of any color you want and, now, thanks to magic, here we have... the rainbow with all the colors... Rainbow, rainbow! Look, I'll give it to you. Catch it... Ohi! It's gone! It faded away! The rainbow cannot be touched.” 19Letters From Juan - Volume 1 Material Required You need three pocketknives. One is white on one side and full of colors like a rainbow on the other side; another is green on one side and red on the other; and the third is a regular knife, white on both sides. Figure 1 shows the three knives, in the given order, while figure 2 shows the other sides of the knives. You also need a plate or any hard and flat surface for the preliminary trick described below. Preparation Have the white/white knife, in a felt or leather sleeve, in any of your pockets. The white/rainbow knife goes in the left back pocket of your trousers, and the green/red knife in the right back pocket. You should be able to ascertain by touch, which side is which in each of the knives in your back pockets. You can do that by touching the closed blade, which always protrudes a little bit from one side, by remembering its position in relation to the colors. Prologue - A Preliminary Trick Take out the regular white knife in its sleeve and pull it out of its sleeve Open the blade and carefully hand the knife to a spectator for him to jokingly “cut” the deck. Retrieve the open knife and use it in a trick of your choice to locate a card and turn it over. For this | devised a version of The Lazy Magician, a magnificent trick by Al Koran, in which the knife is used in a very magical and memorable way. 20‘The Rainbow Knife Begin by showing the random condition of a shuffled deck as you cull eleven cards of values from ace to jack, in order, of any suits. Turn the deck face down, bringing those eleven cards to the top, making the jack the top card). As you spread the deck in your hands to have a card selected, secretly count eleven cards, without letting the spectator take any of them, and procure a break under the eleventh card as you close the spread. Have the selection replaced where you hold the break, which is to say under the ace. Perform an overhand shuffle retaining the twelve- card stock on top Count those twelve cards without altering their order, hand them to a spectator, and instruct him to give that packet several complete cuts Take the cards back and arrange them in a clockwise circle, around a hard flat surface where you can spin a pocketknife on its edge, such as a plate, a closed laptop computer or a table with a glass surface. Take out the regular white knife, open the blade, and set it down on its edge, with the sharp side of the blade up (Fig. 3) Ask a spectator to spin the knife, like a roulette wheel. After several complete turns, the knife will stop and be pointing to a card. Turn that card face up. Let's say it's a four. Count four cards, moving clockwise in the circle, and turn that fourth card over with the point of the knife. It is the selected card! All of this will make easy for everyone to remember the knife has been handled by a spectator, that it has been seen repeatedly on both sides {as it was spinning), and that it is, therefore, a regular pocketknife Once this trick is over, close the blade and bring the left hand, holding the knife, to the left back pocket of your trousers as if to take the card case from there. Switch the knife in your hand for the white/rainbow knife that is in that pocket, as you appear to notice that the card case is on the table. Bring the white rainbow knife out of the pocket, showing its white side, and put it on the table to leave the left hand free and, with it,