Letters from Juan Volume 5 by Juan Tamariz – Book Penguin Magic

“As a wise friend sharing love and guidance, Juan brings you into the fold with charm and warm words: showing his heuristic voyage with deep insight into some astonishing routines and philosophy. Each letter arrives with laughs and diverse ideas for the practical wonderworker. Having a pen pal has never been so exciting!” – Paul Vigil

“Just when you think Juan has given us his all, a new project appears and it is extraordinary! Letters from Juan allows Juan to share more of his ideas with everyone he loves. A wide variety of Juan’s magic is covered in these letters. Juan’s letter on “Secrets” was a real inspiration. I won’t spoil it, but I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.” – Gary Plants

Juan Tamariz is regarded by many to be the world’s greatest living magician. Tamariz is not only a superstar to the Spanish public, but one of the world’s foremost experts on magic theory & methodology, as well as a prolific author. The legend himself now writes to YOU.

After fifty years of performing and traveling Tamariz now sits down to write letters to you, his dear friend, with a focus on close-up magic as well as new stories. Rather than approach these effects in the style of a traditional magic book, Juan is presenting them in the context of a letter, written to only his closest magical friends.

These are letters of love and magic. Not only will you learn the methods for several card effects that have never before been published, you’ll also get Juan’s notes & tips for presentations, as well as variations and plot history.

Translated from Spanish by Rafael Benatar.

Contents of Volume 5 include:

Letter from Juan
Juan begins this letter with a critical examination of why he surrounds himself with the audience in a formal close-up setting. This is a deep dive into some of the theory that makes his shows so energetic and memorable.

Tweezers: A Two-Card Monte
An astonishing variation on the classic two-card Monte effect using Juan’s innovative tweezers move. The magician never touches the Monte cards, and yet they impossibly switch with a pair of cards used as tweezers that have been used to keep the magician honest!

Dupless Transpo
A transposition routine that can be performed with a borrowed shuffled deck that is in use. This transposition of two cards is extremely clean and doesn’t use any duplicates.

Polyphony
Juan has tirelessly worked for years to blend two effects into a seamless routine. For you, his friend, he couldn’t stop there and added a third effect to create a powerhouse routine. Three cards, three packets, and three phases. Cards rise to the top of packets, reverse themselves, and travel to the performer’s pockets.

Impromptu Total Coincidence
Juan’s legendary trick Total Coincidence in which the mates of selected cards are found in the same position of a shuffled deck, and then the entire deck re-orders itself so that all the mates match has long required a special setup done well before the performance takes place. Now, Juan has developed a charming routine that provides strong magic along the way while you set up the Total Coincidence effect right under their nose. Your audience will never see this miracle coming.

Postscript

From Juan:

“These letters unveil the secrets of the tricks and routines I have been planting in moonlit nights throughout the past fifty years, prompted by the whispers of my friends, the Muses, and that I have been nurturing and grafting, year after year, since their birth as magical plants and trees, striving to improve their taste, their scent, and the appetizing presence of their already ripe fruit.

These ideas and near secrets that I keep in a cabinet, which I’ve owned almost since my childhood, are the ones that I want to reveal for the first time to you. I will be sending them along with these letters. Aside from presenting them to lay audiences, they are the tricks and routines I have used for making even the most knowledgeable magicians experience the wonderful and powerful effect of the impossible, as well as the emotion of the fascinating and the magical. As you probably know, it’s a specialty that Maestro Ascanio so rightly named “magic even for magicians,” which I have cultivated with love and passion.

I hope you enjoy them and make others enjoy them!”

-Juan Tamariz

Perfect bound, 44 pages

NOTE – Another Suit to Order requires some simple DIY preparation to create the gimmicks.

Dear Magos and Magas,

I occasionally receive advance copies of effects, books or new products from my friends at Penguin magic with the request that – if I like something – I provide a short, punchy quote for marketing purposes.

So it was with “Letters From Juan”, a series of small booklets featuring the work of maestro Juan Tamariz in a friendly, informal style including personal thoughts and observations that perfectly frame his ingenious effects and methods alongside Juan’s signature warmth and humour.

But how can I offer an unbiased appraisal of this work when Juan is both the dearest of friends and a guiding light for my own love of magic?

How can I tell you how wonderful this material is or how valuable Juan’s thinking might be if I cannot avoid being influenced by my love for Juan and his magic?
The answer – of course – is that I cannot possibly offer an unbiased account of these wonderful and generous booklets but I can add my voice to the many others who will no doubt echo my enthusiasm for this project.

I am fortunate to spend many weeks every year with Juan and in Spain where I continue to be astonished by the passion and creativity the Spaniards have for magic. Over the past thirty years I have learned some of the effects in these booklets and performed them countless times and the old me – the me from not so long ago – might have mourned the “loss” of these secrets that have given me (and my audiences, I hope) great pleasure but today, having learned the value of sharing and generosity in magic, I am genuinely excited for those of you who will discover these beautiful ideas for the first time and make them your own.

I give this project my highest (and extremely biased) recommendation. Not every trick is for every performer but each is a lesson and each is a window into Juan’s way of thinking and I’ve had immense pleasure reading each of Juan’s letters; I sincerely hope you will share that experience even if you never perform a single effect – though I am sure you will.

Penguin asked me to record a video but even though I spend most of my time around camera and computers, I felt that the most effective endorsement I could give “Letters from Juan” was in writing and I hope that if you’ve read this far, you have already decided to treat yourself.

Sincerely

R. Paul Wilson