Close Your Mouth!

by Eleazar Goodenough

Eleazar began writing his book, "Tear-Able Magic" when he was seven years old and completed it by the ripe old age of eight. His interest in paper magic began when he learned how to make his own mouth coils and then went on to invent new ways to use them in productions from paper hats, for example. We published this first article of his book in The Wizards' Journal while the final chapters of his book were being translated (eight-year-old English is almost a foreign language) and photos were being taken of each of his projects. P.S.

Mouth Coil Paper Tear:This is the standard mouth coil effect. The way it's usually performed is this: the magician gets a young helper from the audience and gives him some sheets of white tissue paper to tear up. The magician also takes some white paper and shows his helper how to tear the paper into strips. Then he shows his helper how to ball up the torn papers. Finally, he shows his helper how to shove the ball of paper in his mouth and produce a long streamer of colorful tissue papers. Of course, it works for the magician and all the helper gets is a wet wad of white tissue.

Some magicians, myself included, don't like having the helper put wads of tissue paper in his mouth, so they perform the trick using the fist. Either way, the magician can produce colorful streamers of tissue paper from his fist and the helper can't. That's the way I do the effect, but I go one step further. I hand the helper my magic wand after he proves unsuccessful and suggest he tap the wand on his fist. Then he, too, can produce the colorful streamers from his fist just like I did.

Eleazar describes how this effect is accomplished and then goes on to describe the process or making your own coils from inexpensive tissue paper. This article forms the basis for Chapter One of his book "Tear-Able Magic," except that in the book, he elaborates further.

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