There’s no doubt that of all the kinds of magic tricks that can be performed, the most popular and effective today is to astonish an audience with amazing mentalism magic. This kind of magic creates the illusion that the magician has startling mental powers, or psychic abilities to move objects without touching them or make predictions about the future or read other people’s minds.
Of course such things cannot really be done – they are illusions. Nevertheless, this kind of amazing mentalism magic really is the most powerful of all the performance magic techniques as it really is inexplicable from the audience’s point of view.
A great advantage of mentalism magic tricks is that they can be learned quite easily with a little practice and performed almost anywhere as they frequently don’t require complex props or devices. Any props or devices you might need would be nothing more than a thumb-tip, playing cards, maybe a bit of invisible thread and some magician’s wax – all things that you can carry in your clothes. That said, there are many, many effects which can be done without any props at all. That;s one of the attractions of mentalism, coupled with the fact that it is a real crowd pleaser!
Amazing people with mental magic is no new thing. The tricks and techniques employed probably go back to ancient times when priests and prophets and oracles conned their followers into believing that they could see the future or receive messages from spirits and the dead – much as so-called psychics and mystics do today to their very great discredit.
However, the modern profession of performing apparently supernatural feats for the sake of entertainment is an entirely honourable one just so long as you are not tempted to abuse your magical powers as these charlatans and rascals who call themselves mediums and psychics do.
One of the factors that makes the magic of mentalism so uniquely intriguing to any audience is the way in which it can be performed very close up to people and still leaves them entirely at a loss as to any explanation for the effect.
If you watch carefully the great mentalist performers of our own day (such as Derren Brown) you will see that once you have the basic principles of mental magic under your belt, then the perfection of this techniques comes down to style and presentation.
Any modern magician who wants to truly astound a highly sophisticated modern audience, or even just cause real astonishment at parties, would do well to learn some amazing mentalism magic!
Do You Want to Discover the Fast and Easy Way to Amaze Friends & Family, Be Star of Any Party and Impress Lover?
Click Here to Get Easy Mentalism Now:
==> www.mind-reading-tricks.com
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Austin Hackney is a 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 (including some amazing mentalism effects) here which is a great way of learning and building a repertoire.
You know when I first started messing around with Mentalism I thought it was going to be really difficult… if only Mentalism Revealed had been around then!
Lucky for you, I’m going to show you how to get started straight away.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they first start to play with this fascinating branch of magic is that they believe its going to be hard work, somehow requiring years of study, amazing mental faculties and incredible observation.
The fact, exciting when you think about it, is actually the opposite. In fact mentalism is one of the easiest branches of magic to get into and to be convincing at. Let me show you something.
The effect I am about to share with you works well at the start of a performance. On the board at the front of the room, you have three shapes – perhaps a red triangle, a blue square and a green circle.
As people arrive everyone notices the shapes, which you don’t mention.
You explain that you are going to talk through how minds can affect other people and you ask for a volunteer.
You confirm nothing has been agreed with them, and after talking a little about embedding commands, mental mind waves or whatever else you want, you ask them to tell you their shape. Lets say they pick the Triangle.
Instantly, with no pause, you flip the board over, where everyone can see you have written the words (You will pick the triangle)
Person sits down and you continue – believe me, I have done this many times, and audiences are always amazed and keen to know how it works….
You want to know too? Ok… so lets say they pick the circle – straight away you point to the persons chair (the person you picked) and tell them to look under it, where stapled to the underside of the seat they will find an envelope predicting they will pick the circle.
And if they say the square, show them the envelope inside your pocket – being clear there are no other envelopes there…
Now this may not sound amazing to you, but mentalism effects are often very simple – the real “secret” comes in the performance – and that is something I will reveal in greater depth in another article.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I first came across this magic trick I was very skeptical that anyone would believe it was anything special. So I started using it – the first time I can tell you I was shaking, literally, in front of a VERY senior client. I mean, I was using this effect to “prove” that I have great perception skills, and the client I was showing this to has spent a lot of money with us over time. The room was maybe 45 people, all very well educated, intelligent and switched on… I certainly was setting my standards high!
Anyway, I needn’t have worried, at the end of the session I was mobbed by various people asking how I had done it, and I overheard literally loads of possible solutions – all of them RIDICULOUS!!!
But that is what is so good about mentalism, even when I revealed the solution to one of my colleagues he almost refused to believe it was that simple.
The second time I used this effect was at a trainer session – I was teaching trainers how to use effects like this to improve their status with their clients. As the mentalism revealed itself to be little more than three predictions, I had to spend another 15 minutes explaining and re-explaining that I simply had NO idea what the volunteer would say, and that I had no idea how to guide them what to say. Even when I took the audience step by step through what I had really done, some of them still could not understand that it was performed in this way.
How did I make them so sure it couldn’t have been the simple act of three predictions? Well – the amazing thing about humans and mentalism is this – we all tend toward the most unlikely solution IF it is explained and sold in a convincing way! So, when I was first doing this effect, Derren Brown was often on television, and people loved his explanation of embedding commands into the audiences mind. SO I simply said things to my volunteer like
“Lets not go round in circles”
“As we talk, please don’t think I will try and, you know, try angle your thoughts in one direction…”
“Its really neither here, nor square….”
Yes – ridiculous, but afterwards he confided in me that he heard some of the commands (as he called them) and then was concerned that he was making the right choice!
The great thing is, I could do EXACTLY the same method (ie, HOW i ACTUALLY did the magic trick) but with a different explanation – to suit the times, my audience, me and so on…you want examples…?
So I could link with the spirits, and get some clues from the spirit helper, who would tell me in advance what was going to be said
OR
I could claim to be expert at seeding ideas, say at a sales conference, and so long as my opening script mentioned the shapes, people would believe that
OR
I could claim to have hypnotised the volunteer to say what I want them to say….
You see the thing I really like about mentalism is it is SO versatile. The real magic secret that you need to understand is that it is all in the performance. Certainly some magical ability helps, and will allow for greater effects, but I would never have believed the reactions I have had to the effect above, if I hadn’t seem them myself.
I would love to know how this effect works for you, and anything you would like to add to it is well received.
Do You Want to Discover the Fast and Easy Way to Amaze Friends & Family, Be Star of Any Party and Impress Lover?
Click Here to Get Easy Mentalism Now:
==> www.mind-reading-tricks.com
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Graham has been interested in Mentalism and Magic for many years, but it was a series of meetings with some of magics professionals just three years ago that taught him some of the real secrets to being a top performer. Graham uses Mentalism to entertain and instruct in his training sessions, often claiming the effects are a result of “embedding commands” and subtle reading of “micro-signals”. His ongoing interest is in practical solutions to performing Mentalism to amaze, astound and entertain others. You can catch up here: mentalismrevealed.net/