Secrets Hidden In The Leaves
An unbelievable secret of the leaves is that they are alive.
They may seem to the uninitiated to be inanimate but they are as alive as the forests from which they came. Spend enough time with them and you will know them. They may have a will of their own, as you will learn. Each card has its own personality that is revealed through connecting with them. You will notice when they tease you and inconvenience you, showing themselves when you wish to hide them. Some are ambitious while others prefer to work for you in secret, certain cards want to hide and a few want to be seen. The cards hide many secrets and if you devote yourself to them they will reveal their secrets to you. They only obey one whom they respect and their respect and obedience cannot be bought, it must be earned.
Cards are painted with hope and bring color to our desires. Many a man has partaken in that old, time honored, venerable tradition of matching wits and wallets over a game of cards. As many or more women have entrusted their hearts to the turn of a card promising their awaited future. Some lose when some gain and there are those who choose not to play as the pain of losing can be greater than the pleasure of winning. Others choose to live on blind luck and shuffles dreaming of the ever elusive big score.
Traditionally playing cards were completely unique as every leaf of paper had to be illustrated, painted and cut by hand. Centuries ago these playthings were pieces of art commissioned by the wealthy. We know this because some have survived and are documented, however, I suspect that even peasants fashioned their own cards with what materials they had available to them but that these did not survive to be passed down generation to generation.
Eventually packs of cards would be mass-produced on printing presses. The wooden and metal plates were designed to create uniform images but as the ink was unevenly placed and applied the cards would be completely unique in their own way with the ink bleeding outside of its margins. Seeing these cards and their wonderful patterns and imperfections greatly inspired me in my own deck, Hidden Leaves No. 5.
Hidden Leaves are a love letter to the long line of creators of the leaves throughout time. Having observed playing cards very closely it is my opinion that some of the most iconic playing card designs were created by the same artist around the 1880s. I believe this designer left hints in the classic Tally-Ho and Rider designs and that he left them as signatures. Artists were kept anonymous by the companies they worked for in an effort to reduce competition and thus fees of artists back in those days. Sadly, we have never been able to discover the artist of those classic designs but I have recognized his style and motifs. Some of these motifs and philosophy have been incorporated into Hidden Leaves as a tribute to this incredible and unknown artist.
Part of that tribute is to not explain certain elements of the design but rather allow you to connect with the deck and the art and initiate yourself into its mysteries. When we look at things we don’t understand we ask questions and when we ask questions we are able to go outside ourselves and hopefully step into the eyes and the mind of another and connect with their knowledge, their taste, and ideas.
Hidden Leaves are painted pieces of cardboard with suits of dreams, lies, and love.
Every deck of cards is different even if they are made from the same materials at the same printing press. Paper quality changes between batches and environmental factors such as the temperature and humidity can greatly affect how the cards feel when they come out of the printer. Most people could never tell by touch but those learned in the cards can tell the difference, sight unseen with just a touch.
A deck of cards is like a bird, hold it too tightly and you will kill it but hold it too loosely and it will fly away from you. One must learn how to handle the cards to accomplish their task. Some techniques require a new deck and very gentle touches while other techniques irreversibly bend the cards so that they are never the same again. Only experience will allow you to understand the cards. Proper instruction can help, if you can find it.
"For superior work the cards should be new, thin, flexible and of best quality.
Cheap cards are clumsy and not highly finished.
Cards that have been handled two or three hours become more or less sticky, and the slightest friction is a detriment to perfect manipulation."
- The Expert At The Card Table
The true lore and history of the leaves have been lost to time. They have appeared throughout time in different places under different names. We have tracked them down throughout the centuries but even the earliest references to them say that they are very old. From our study, the earliest mentions of them relate to them being toys used to play games of chance. Their uses for divination is written about later but we are wise enough to know that we do not know their true history.
The medieval people, with their limited knowledge of foreign people combined with Biblical stories of Egypt, associated strange sojourners with that most famous land and named them (-E)gyp(-t)sies. Legends and myths color our imagination with gypsy fortune tellers working with secret oracles disguised as paper. The cards themselves are ancient, mysterious and ritualistic. Their esoteric connections leave one wondering about their provenance.
(-E)gyp(-t)sies
Playing cards have two colors, red and black, signifying the day and the night.
There are fifty-two cards in a deck, the same number of weeks in a year.
Every year has four seasons and the deck has four suits, one for each season.
There are thirteen cards in a suit and there are thirteen lunar cycles in a year.
Finally, if you add up all the values in a deck, with Aces being one, Jacks as eleven, Queens are twelve and Kings as thirteen, plus one for the Joker you get 365, the number of days in a year. No one has ever been able to explain how or why ancient astrological wisdom was secretly encoded in a toy.
There is a high probability that anytime a deck of playing cards is shuffled it is the first and last time that it will ever be in that exact order. The sheer number of combinations has made them ideal tools for gaming and divination. You can spend your whole life with cards and they will generate new gameplay scenarios and stories for you to explore. Every time you shuffle a deck of fifty-two cards, the chance of it ending up in the order it appears is 52 factorial or 8.1 times 10⁶⁷. These are numbers that we simply cannot understand. To try to illustrate this to you, I want you to try to understand that there are more possible combinations of a shuffled deck of playing cards than there are atoms on the entire Earth. It’s simply mind blowing. If you added the possibility of some cards being face-up or face-down in the shuffle the amount of unique combinations would be more than the amount of atoms that exist in the whole universe.
Playing cards are the most recognizable tool for gambling, gaming, divination and magic in the entire world. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has never held a deck of cards as most people have one laying around their house. How is it that one of the most known objects in the world is one of the least understood? I can only tell you to ask the cards themselves.
MAHDI THE MAGICIAN
First Edition
PDF | 194 Pages
Learn how to entertain your family & friends with easy card tricks you can do!
For the first time Mahdi The Magician reveals some of the mysteries of his life and philosophy as he takes you behind the scenes so you can learn the meaning of the cards and how to read them as easily as you are reading these words. You will be able to understand the messages Hidden in The Leaves waiting for you.
"Rider Backs, Reimagined."
- Dan & Dave Buck
A Modern Classic
Hidden Leaves Playing Cards are Made in the USA & printed to the highest quality possible by the United States Playing Card Company. No detail was considered too small or trivial when pursuing the high standards we aim to achieve.
The cards are made from the same Premium Bee Stock used in world class casinos for durability & flexibility. This premium stock has been Crushed Thin so that they can be used for superior and fine card manipulation by card experts worldwide. Finally they have been enveloped in a Smooth Finish so that they are long lasting and glide effortlessly in any environment.
Bring The Inner World of Cards to Life
Hidden Leaves playing cards feature no indexes just like playing cards used to be made. This unique feature allows you to explore all sorts of forgotten card transformations, hypnotize your audiences with hallucinations of duplicates, renders well-known prearranged stacks completely invisible (even to magicians).
