Fast Easy Tip

There’s no doubt that the branch of performance magic known as ‘mentalism’ is undergoing something of a renaissance these days.

In part that must be to do with the success of new wave mentalists such as Derren Brown making their presence felt on prime time TV. In part, many modern audiences want something cutting edge – they don’t want bunnies from hats and pick-a-card routines as they are too obviously ‘tricks’.

I’m glad mentalism’s making a comeback as it’s one of the most high impact techniques in any magician’s repertoire. As a magician not afraid to share ‘secrets’ with novices, I also know it’s something anyone can learn with a little practice once they know what those secrets are.

But let’s get one thing straight from the start: mentalism is as much a magic TRICK as any other. It might seem almost mystical in its effects – and you certainly want it to if you’re performing it! – but it is just a series of clever psychological techniques and close observations of behaviour and, in all honesty, some simple gimmicks and tricks that have nothing to do with psychology at all, that enable a mentalist to create the illusion of psychic powers.

It’s only disreputable performers that make fraudulent claims of ‘real psychic powers.’ Fortunately the best modern practitioners such as James Randi, Penn & Teller, Derren Brown, have denied their false claims and exposed their methods time and again.

So what are these secrets that enable mentalists to apparently understand your secret thoughts, read your mind and even control what you are thinking?

If you’ve some experience in magic you won’t be surprised that the secrets are simple once you know what they are! There are fundamentally three aspects to mental magic over and beyond the gimmicks, sleight-of-hand, gadgetry and so on that are the stock in trade of all mentalists just as they are cardists or coinists (yes, even Derren Brown is just a trickster!) Any bluff about NLP and other such systems is mere smoke and mirrors. He knows what he is doing!

That said, there are some psychological skills that have an application to a specific kind of mentalism, so let’s take a look at those here:

The Three Basic Psychological Techniques of Mental Magic

1. Reading Body Language.

- There is a lot of literature out there these days about body language and how to interpret it but the basic idea underpinning it all is that people tend to express their thoughts and feelings not only consciously in what they say but also unconsciously in the way they move, look, stand and respond physically. And these ‘non-verbal messages’ often tell the truth even when the person is verbally lying. So the mentalist’s first skill is to study and understand body language.

2. The Power of Suggestion.

- It is no surprise that Mentalism first came to popularity amongst audiences and performers in the 1940s when there were great advances being made in the still young science of psychology. One of the practical applications of this was the development and refinement of hypnotism. Effective hypnotism can be summed up as ‘relaxation and rapport’. Once your subject is relaxed and trusts you, you are able to suggest ideas and thoughts to them which they are more likely to accept as their ‘defences are down.’ There is nothing mystical about hypnotism and I am doubtful of the various exaggerated therapeutic claims made about. However, it is, properly understood and practiced, a powerful bit of ‘psychological kit’ to have in your mentalist tool box. When people are suggestible, they are also more likely to reveal information to you without knowing it. This is the power of suggestion. So the second skill for the mentalist to study is hypnotism.

3. The Laws of Perception.

- In many ways this is one that all magicians must study to some extent as it is essential to many forms of misdirection, but it applies in particularly interesting ways to mental magic. Knowing how the human brain tends to read, categorise and recall information is very important. But don’t worry, you don’t need a college degree in neuroscience to pick up what you need to know! The main areas for you to look at are how visual perception works, how people think verbally and in images, the process of long and short-term memory and so on. However, you cannot perform mentalist effects using this knowledge alone. It is simply that this kind of knowledge can be useful in making the effects more convincing. So, the third skill for the mentalist is to learn how to understand how the subject is perceiving himself and the situation.

And those are the fundamental skills in a nutshell. Obviously a detailed analysis of all of these is beyond the scope of an article such as this. Fortunately, there’s some good literature out here on all of these subjects and some great books about mentalism itself. Any reputable magic bookshop will have one or two good titles worthy of study.

Here is some suggested reading: ‘Tricks of the Mind’ by Derren Brown; ’13 Steps to Mentalism’ by Corinda and ‘Practical Mental Magic’ by Theodore Annermann (this is an excellent book by a great magician and will particularly surprise people who still cling to the hope that mentalists never have anything up their sleeves!).

If you don’t have time to study in that kind of depth, don’t worry! You can still learn some simple yet very powerful mentalist routines that are well-established and highly effective and will work for you after only a little practice if you follow the system of the routine. Great mentalism tricks to learn and perform even as a novice are spoon-bends, card predictions and the powerful ‘book test’ tricks. Any of these can be found from good magic dealers or if you prefer a visual demonstration and explanation, as a video download – an increasingly popular method for learning magic of all kinds as you can actually see and hear what’s going on – watch again as many times as you want, like having a personal teacher who never gets tired! If this is an option that interests you, then you might like to look up ‘Mindbender Book Test’, ‘Thought Transmission’ and ‘Emotion’ here.

Whether you want to pursue mentalism as a serious side of your pro routine or just get a couple of stunning tricks under your belt to amaze your friends, I wish you every success with your ‘mental magic’!

Do You Want to Discover the Secrets Behind Mind Reading Magicians? Click Here to Download Mind Reading Exposed Right Now:

==> www.mind-reading-tricks.com/go/exposed/

——————————————————————
Austin is a performing magician, entertainer, theatre practitioner and writer of many years standing, always keen to share his experience and encourage the novice. His website, is a great free resource for magic tutorials, articles, visual guides, eBooks and more.

Austin specialises in coin tricks and manipulation. Having worked in ‘the real world’ all his life, he is gaining a reputation on the web. Austin has a passion for magic tricks and has always been keen to teach and support the novice.

He finds his website is proving an excellent medium for reaching out to aspiring magicians across the globe and offer them the best teaching not only in learning magic tricks but, importantly, learning how to perform them well. If you want to learn magic tricks well, go there now: www.magic-tricks.ws

Mentalism is arguably the most popular and growing form of magical performance around today. It’s also one of the areas that seems most frightening to novice magicians because of the mystique surrounding it. Of course, that mystique is all part of the act and once you know the insider secrets behind what really goes on in most mentalism tricks and routines, you’ll find that it is no more (or less) demanding to learn than any other kind of magic trick.

The power of mentalism tricks and routines lies essentially in two things:

one is that it appeals to the fundamental hopes and fears of the human mind. Just think how perennially popular are ghost stories, psychic readings, U.F.O. sightings and anything which suggests that there is ‘something more’ to life than the humdrum of daily experience.

another is that of all magical traditions it does most to mask its true techniques in a cloud of mystery and misinformation.

However, what really distinguishes a mentalism trick from any other simple magical effect is the presentation style and context. The techniques are almost all the same as the fundamental magic techniques of any other branch or style of magic.

Quite simply, the mentalist proposes that the feat is performed by either ‘psychic’ powers or, more commonly these days, by some clever ‘psychological’ techniques. Most magic tricks make no such claims. Everyone knows that the effects are achieved by ‘sleight-of-hand’ and misdirection. The key to understanding the magic of mentalism is to realise that the claims to ‘psychic’ powers and ‘psychological’ techniques are merely a case of smoke and mirrors; they are merely elements of the stage persona of mentalism. In fact, most mentalism routines use gimmicked props, ‘sleight-of-hand’ and misdirection in just the same way as other magic tricks do!

This might disappoint some people who want to believe that there is something mystical going on but if you want to perform mentalism then you really need to know!

Derren Brown, one of the most famous mentalists working today and one who presents his mentalism as ‘clever psychology’ has actually been quite candid about the trickery he employs. For example, he performed a routine which, incidentally, he didn’t invent (I believe that it came from the great mentalist of the last century, Theodore Annemann) on the UK television show, Richard & Judy in which he claimed to plant a letter in the presenter’s mind through clever psychology when it seemed that she had a free choice to mentally choose any letter of the alphabet. In fact, it is an old routine and relies on a gimmicked thumb tip with a small pencil lead concealed in the end of it. So how did it work?

He asked the presenter to think of a letter, any letter but not R or J because that would be too obvious and hold the letter clearly in her mind. He then took a piece of paper and appeared to write on it with a pencil that he then discarded. He then placed the paper behind his back and asked her to reveal the letter that she had chosen. he next produced the piece of paper and there, written upon it was the selected letter!

In fact, he didn’t actually write anything the first time. The paper was blank as he held it behind his back. Once she had told him what letter was, he simply wrote it on the paper with his thumb gimmick before revealing it.

The reason I give you this example is not in any way to undermine or expose Derren Brown – who is an excellent performer and rightly admired. It is just to give one example of how easy, in fact, mentalism can be. What is really required is a lot of guts and again a good handle on the traditional techniques of manipulation and misdirection.

If you’re a magician or an aspiring magician then you really should add at least some mentalism effects to your routines. The public appetite for these tricks is insatiable. There are many good books available and especially useful, downloadable video tutorials that are a great place to start.

You Want to Discover the Secrets Behind Mind Reading Magicians? Click This Link to Download the Ultimate Mind Reading & Mentalism Manual Right Now:

==> www.mind-reading-tricks.com/go/mindread/

——————————————————————
Austin Hackney is a performing magician, entertainer, theatre practioner and writer of many years standing, always keen to share his experience and encourage the novice. His website, The Magic Tricks Homepage is a great free resource for magic tutorials, articles, visual guides, eBooks and more. If you want to learn magic well, not just a huge number of tricks but solid performance skills, the site is well worth a visit. You can download magic video tutorials here which is a great way of learning and building a repertoire.

Card Tricks are some of the most popular magic tricks that there are and equally mind-reading effects are increasingly popular, so why not combine the two and learn ow to do mind-reading tricks with cards? Not only are you tapping into the two most popular kinds of trick, but there are some simple card techniques that lend themselves naturally to the performance of mind-reading effects.

So what card tricks techniques lend themselves especially well to mind-reading effects?

Well, first of all let’s be clear what a mind-reading effect actually is. It is when a magician appears to ‘read’ or ‘see’ the thoughts or an image in the mind of a spectator. Of course, this can’t really be done and it has been scientifically demonstrated often enough that people who claim to have ‘psychic powers’ are either lying or deluded and that all the effects that people experience with them can be easily explained scientifically. That doesn’t, sadly, stop it being big business. There’s always someone unethical enough to try and make a buck from the gullible or the needy.

Magicians who do mind-reading tricks, however, fall into a different category. Magicians don’t pretend that they really have ‘psychic powers’. We know it’s a trick, we say it’s a trick but we all join in as if it was a mystic event for the fun of it. The real techniques behind mind-reading are the same as any other magic trick: misdirection, props, gimmicks, sleight-of-hand, stooges in the audience, smoke and mirrors!

So, what card effects can we use in mind-reading? The three main ones that come immediately to mind are the ‘card force’, the ‘marked or spotted card’ and ‘the controlled shuffle’. You could also use ‘palming’, ‘switching’ and any number of other sleights but to keep it relatively simple, let’s just focus on those first three.

A ‘card force’ is when the magician controls the card that a spectator chooses, seemingly by a free or even random choice. There are many techniques for achieving the force, some of them simple and others more subtle and complex. We won’t go into them here but the point is that clearly if the magician can secretly force a card on a spectator then he can very confidently ‘predict’ what the card is or ‘read the mind’ of the spectator as they concentrate on the image of the card to seemingly ‘divine’ what it is. This, simple as it is, can be dressed up with patter and other business to make a very powerful and baffling number of effects of the ‘mind-reading’ variety. You can learn card force techniques from reputable books, websites and your local magic club.

The ‘marked’ card technique is also quite straight-forward in principle. The magician allows the spectator a genuine free choice of card but then marks it out in some way, so it can be located again even if he hasn’t seen its face value. The card can be inverted, scratched or crimped, for example. Under cover of some misdirection, the kind can then be secretly viewed. Then the magician can go on comfortably to read the spectator’s mind in whatever elaborate and acted-up way the trick requires!

The final method we’ll look at here is the ‘controlled shuffle’. In this technique, the magician allows the spectator a free choice of card and then, as the card is replaced into the pack it is shuffled in to give the impression that it is thoroughly lost in the deck but actually the magician has used the technique to guide the card through the pack to wherever he wants it to be – usually the top or bottom of the deck from which point it can easily be glimpsed and then ‘mind read’ or predicted.

If you already do some card tricks and are familiar with these techniques then you can start straight away to build mind-reading routines using the skills you already have. If not, then it’s worth your while learning this basic card techniques as they’ll open up endless possibilities for you and are not difficult to learn with just a little practice. You can learn them from books, other magicians, some websites and, of course, downloadable video tutorials.

Do You Want to Discover the Secrets Behind Mind Reading Magicians? Click Here to Download Mind Reading Exposed Right Now:

==> www.mind-reading-tricks.com/go/exposed/

——————————————————————
Austin Hackney is a performing magician, entertainer, theatre practioner and writer of many years standing, always keen to share his experience and encourage the novice. His website, The Magic Tricks Homepage is a great free resource for magic tutorials, articles, visual guides, eBooks and more. If you want to learn magic well, not just a huge number of tricks but solid performance skills, the site is well worth a visit. You can download magic video tutorials here which is a great way of learning and building a repertoire.