What the Rising Peek looks like:

You start off by having two cards freely selected from a freely shuffled deck, while the magician has their head turned. They are placed in different parts of the deck, all while the magician is still looking away. The magician shuffles the deck some more before placing it back in the card box.

After some cheesy magic-adjacent lines and gestures, one card from the boxed deck rises and it’s one of the selected cards. The magician might make a distinguished joke such as “I can’t get it up a second time, so I’ll do another trick…”

The magician looks towards the person whose card hasn’t been found yet. “I won’t even look through the cards… I’ll just tell you the card.”

After some BS pseudo-psychological byplay, the magician says the name of the second card correctly.

Method:

We all have done rising cards at some point. What I’m about to give you is a way to use almost any method of rising cards as a peek. I think I have some disease where I turn every trick I come across into something mentalism related. I digress.

I will not teach a specific version of the rising card here. This is for you to experiment with the versions you have or already know. Most likely it’ll work with most of them.

I imagined this idea to be performed with two friends rather than a one on one performance. A one on one would theoretically be possible, but keeping track of two cards as well as the trick might be a bit cumbersome for the one person.

Typically, the cards are facing you when the rising card occurs. We will use this to our advantage. When the usually single card rises from the deck, it usually drags the card in front of it up as well. The drag is usually enough so that you can at least see the index of the card. This will be our peek. See below.

All you have to do is control both the cards so they are next to each other.

I would prefer to do this with a cull, because there are no unnecessary movements. If you need them to be on top for your rising card, you may consider just a pass. The important point psychologically is that they saw both cards inserted in different spots in the deck.

Once the cards have been controlled to be next to each other and are wherever they need to be for the trick to work, you’re ready. All you have to do is make the first card rise, and see what it brings up with it. As you remove the card that’s risen, you just push the peeked-card back flush with the deck. You’re ready to move into the “mind-reading” portion of the trick now.

What’s nice about this is that most of the time, the card that’s rising looks singular to the people viewing it. They don’t see that there’s other cards rising alongside it, since it is behind the card. Another nice advantage is that the magician doesn’t need to go back to the deck to peek, control or find the second card.

Troubleshooting:

Let’s say the universe is being an absolute bitch to you. The second card doesn’t rise.

If your rising card occurs from the top of the deck or from the face, it might not be hard for you to peel the box back exposing the index of the card.

If your rising card is from the center and for some reason or another not bringing the second card up with it then you could employ a one ahead. Once the card rises, place it in the second person’s hand, the person whose card you were meant to peek.

To be clear, the card that has risen is in the wrong person’s hand.

Have them name their card out loud, and invite them to turn it over. Just before they do, you say “Wait… I don’t normally do it this way but I just got an epiphany…”

Since the person just said their card out loud, you go in the deck and pull it out.

Here you might want to rattle off some details of the risen card’s properties, like its color, suit etc. This could further cement the idea that you “know what it is and go in the deck to pull it out”.

Place the deck away, and take the card that they were holding. Put both cards together and casually separate them again so that it is ambiguous as to which card is which. Reveal both cards.

You may want to stick the jokers and a dupe or two in there to thicken the deck, increasing the friction and the chances of the rising card to bring the card(s) up with it.

Conclusion and Further Ideas:

There you have it, a little bonus moment that you can harvest from any old rising card plot. A half-baked idea to further the usage of this peek would be to have someone write a word down on the card. You could have one card signed (the card to rise) and have a word written on one card (the card to peek). If you decide to use this idea and peek at the word, I would suggest not revealing the card as well. I would try to avoid the notion of the card and word being linked, and just reveal the word. If you did somehow look at the card, why would you not know the card but know the word?

Anywho, hope you get some use from this.