Mental(magic)ism Blog

The decent in to middle earth

5/2/2018

Where did J.R. Tolkien go wrong and what the hell is J.K Rowling’s problem, do either of them actually know anything about magic?

I have watched all the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, seen Bilbo Baggins and Frodo become invisible using the one ring. Seen Gandalf fight demons with his enchanted staff, watched Saruman summon evil spirits and seen the magic of the elves with my own eyes.

I’ve sat through all the Harry Potter movies and have read the books, I’ve witnessed, levitation, teleportation, flying broom sticks, mind control techniques and the side effects of polly juice, I’ve seen those young wizards perform transfiguration, watched them learn charms, astronomy, potions, divination, herbology and even arithmancy. I’ve sat on the edge of my seat as they battled death eaters, demon’s, ghosts, fantastical beasts and the torturous Cruciatus curse.

And don't get me started on where Stan Lee and Steve Ditko went wrong with the mysterious Doctor Strange.

The problem is that at no point during the exploits of Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Albus Dumbledore, professor Snape or even the dark lord himself did I hear the ultimate magical incantation “pick a card any card” and not once among the wizards, witch’s sorcerers, orcs, elves, demons and spirits of middle earth did I witness one Sybil cut.

Honestly do these authors and movie makers have any clue what real magic looks like? If this continues I despair for the future of our art.

Luckily every year 3500 powerful magicians descend in to middle earth (known among true wizards as Blackpool) and at least 3000 of them will combine their forces to re-balance the cosmos and address this magical mishap.

Phew!

props and propless

16/1/2018

Let’s talk props and minimalistic mentalism.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the popularity of what has become known as prop-less mentalism with a small number of marketing minded mentalists making a name for themselves within the magic fraternity.

The problem is, in my opinion, much of the prop-less mentalism being touted as cutting edge seems very jumbled and heavily instructional. It works fantastically (sometimes) in a magic club lecture or when you are being followed by a film crew while filming a DVD release, but try it in a dark night club on the Costa del Sol at 11pm when the crowd have been drinking since lunch time and the kids are skidding across the dance floor on their knees, and it is a completely different matter.

I'm not saying I'd give it a go in that sort of environment, it does of course have its place and I would never say ignore it completely, however I would say pick your prop-less routines carefully and use them sparingly.

For our mentalism to be effective in any environment, we tend to need people to write things down, it is the most efficient way of getting the information you want to feed back as though you are reading their mind. There are of course some amazing gadgets and bits of equipment on the market for gaining the information required, from gimmicked pads with magnetic pens, to special wallets with multiple peeks and expensive electrical gizmo’s that can transmit a drawing to a watch via a smart phone at three hundred meters, I have manufactured and sold a few myself over the years and some of those on the market are good but others are terrible.

But you should ask yourself, do you need all that stuff? Well no, to be quite honest you don’t. Think of it like this, as long as you keep it simple, the audience don’t care (because they shouldn’t know) how you get the word they are thinking of and the minute you accept the fact they don’t care (and shouldn’t know), then it doesn’t matter if you use a hi tech computerized clipboard, the latest in photosensitive film hidden in a wallet, or a simple centre tear, what truly matters is that when you feed the info back to them, not only does it entertain them, but it appears as though the only way you can know what they are thinking, is if you can read their mind.

Here’s an example of a question I have asked on multiple forums, one which seems to offend a few people.

You can buy a piece of equipment which includes a receiver and five computer chipped plastic cards with ESP symbols printed on them, which will enable you to tell which one of the five symbols has been chosen while your back is turned and you are across the room, the deluxe version of this equipment with leather wallets, extra chips and blank cards, costs approximately eight hundred dollars.

My question is this, why would you pay eight hundred dollars for this hi-tech equipment whey you can do the same thing with five of your business cards and a pen?

But let’s take it a step further, what if I told you that you could take ten standard cheap blank cards from your pocket and hand them with a pen to ten different audience members with instructions they draw ANY picture they like on the blank side, then collect the cards, mix them and have two chosen at random by an audience member, one seen and one unseen, while your back is turned and you are across the room, and then with no pumping no stooges, no electronics and no gaffed cards, recreate both drawings and give character readings to the people who drew them……..would you pay me eight hundred dollars for that effect?

Now I know some people would say yes and then they would be very disappointed when they discovered they’d need to learn a mnemonic peg system to instantly remember ten freely drawn pictures and link them together to create a stack, learn how to do a simple but sloppy looking false shuffle to retain the stack order and then apply audience management to ensure they know which drawings are chosen at random while their back is turned.

But you can do it and it is not as difficult as it sounds, plus once you’ve learned the skills required you can apply them to dozens of different routines.

To my mind that knowledge is worth far more than eight hundred dollars.

Incidentally, I call this routine 'The $800 Dollar Miracle' and it will be included in my next book 'Minimalistic, Metaphysical, Mentalism.

Until next time. Be lucky.

Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life

12/9/2017

Some of the most influential minds in Mentalism (in my opinion) from the past twenty years or so, have recommended that anybody who is serious about their mentalism (not mental magic) should invest some time in studying 'Passages' written by Gail Sheehy.

For those who don't know, 'Passages' was written by Gail Sheehy and published in 1976. At the time is was a revolutionary book that changed the way millions of men and women around the world looked at the stages of their lives.

For the working mentalist who includes readings in their shows, it offered groundbreaking and brilliant insights into the predictable crises of adult life. Sheehy was able to put into print the universal and inevitable passages we experience in our twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond and by shining a light on these normal trials of adult life, she made sense of what many readers had spent a life time trying to understand.

But is it relevant today?

The problem is the original was based on how people (mainly women\) lived their lives in the 1960s (in the USA) and much has changed medically, and in society since then. She did however publish an updated version called 'New Passages' in 1995 and it was at that time through the writings of Jon Riggs that I picked on the revised version.

At the time she published the revision she admitted that because so much had changed since the original, she had to rewrite the book. But even the 1995 revision seems to have been updated with observations from the 1970s and 1980s.

The problem is with the fairly recent advances in technology which enables us to connect almost instantly to the rest of the world, the way we live our lives seems to be changing more rapidly than at any other time in recent history. For example, as I write this my son is seventeen and a half years old and has a completely different outlook on life than I did at that age. He's connected to the world via a wireless link in his room whereas I left school at 16 and was serving in the military by his age, but my father left school at 15 and was halfway through his apprenticeship by then and my grandfather left school and started his apprenticeship at 13 and was married at 18 with one on the way.

Here's an example from the original 1976 publication referring to those in their 20's.

"The Trying 20s -- The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life's uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit".

Of course that image has changed in the past 40 years, these days most 20 year old's are struggling to get on the property ladder (in the UK at least) and are often forced to remain in the family home until their 30's.

That said I think New Passages is still worth a read if you are into readings, it really does give you an insight into the various milestones that most of us reach during our life time. However, although I think many of the classic milestones are still in place they do seem to have shifted and continue to shift along the timeline somewhat.

How will the next 50 years change the passages of our lives, who knows?

OVER-PROVING

5/8/2017

Just like over-proving bread dough, over-proving during a mentalism routine leads to the same end, namely a product that looks OK but is hard to swallow.

What do I mean by over-proving?

Well let me offer an example, in an attempt to clarify my thought process.

Scenario One:
During a seemingly impromptu performance, the miracle worker asks an audience member to remove all the loose change from his pocket and hold it in his dominant hand palm up with his non-dominant had alongside it, again palm up.

He reaches over, lifts one coin from the pile and drops it into the volunteer’s empty hand as he instructs him to close the hand into a fist and turn it palm down.
After suitable patter the volunteer opens his hand and discovers the coin is bent.

Scenario Two:
During a seemingly impromptu performance, the miracle worker asks an audience member to remove all the loose change from his pocket and choose one copper and one silver coin. He then asks the volunteer to nominate one of the coins, he says silver.

The performer hands him a pen and instructs him to put his initials on the silver coin. He then takes the silver (nominated coin) and while demonstrating that it is impossible to bend a coin using your hands, asks the volunteer to try it with the copper coin.

Once the volunteer agrees it is impossible, both coins are dropped into his hand and he is instructed to hold them in his fist, then, after suitable patter, the volunteer opens his hand and discovers that of the two, the silver nominated and signed coin is bent.

Both excellent routines, but to my mind (and again this is my opinion) one falls into the realm of metaphysical mentalism, while the other is a mental magic trick.

I guess you are aware that I feel scenario number two is the mental magic trick so let me expand on that statement.

In the case of this type of routine, when you ask someone to sign the coin there is only one reason for doing so. That reason, whether you mention it verbally or not is to prove that you cannot switch the coin for one of your own.

Now if you present the routine as a magician performing a magic trick, then I suppose you could say signing the coin may strengthen the effect. But if you are trying to create an air of believability by presenting the routine as a genuine example of metaphysical psychic phenomena (theatrically speaking), then signing the coin actually has the opposite effect.

As soon as you sow the seed that if the coin isn’t signed you could switch it, whether you do that verbally or not, you also psychologically imply that you could be using trickery to bend the coin, rather than a mysterious psychic ability.

Another example of over-proving would be pulling a folded prediction billet from a next of boxes, purses or envelopes, sorry guys it doesn't strengthen the effect, it's just over-proving.

So what, you may be thinking, well once you sow that seed any further mentalism routines will be observed with the same mind set and the problem is that effective mentalism requires that your audience buys into the possibility that what you are doing may just be real, even if that suspension of disbelief exists only for the duration of your performance.

Until next time.

HANUSSEN's Demise

6/4/2017

A few days ago, on Facebook, one of my mentalist friends asked, “what do you find is the hardest part of writing a book for other performers”.

I pondered that question for a while before I decided the most difficult part for me is wording what makes perfect sense in my own head, in such a way that it makes sense to others.

However sometimes, when it comes to certain aspects of Mentalism that I am particularly passionate about, I am often guilty of the assumption that other people are as enthusiastic as I am.

This was brought home quite recently with the release of my latest DVD ‘Hanussen’s Demise’ when someone who had watched the promotional trailer and read the supporting information, emailed me to ask “what is the actual effect”?

After re-reading the information I’d included on my website it became obvious that he was correct, without an insight into the life of Erik Jan Hanussen you wouldn’t know what his Telepathic Events routine consisted of, how it helped to catapult him to stardom and how it inspired my own ‘Hanussen’s Demise’ routine.

Erik Jan Hanussen was a fascinating man and any mentalist would do well to read about his life.

Born Hermann Steinschneider in Vienna in 1889 he was an Austrian, Jewish, hypnotist, mentalist, occultist, astrologer, clairvoyant performer and charlatan, who in his role as the man who predicted the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler, became known as the prophet of the Third Reich.

He predicted the Reichstag fire, the event that allowed recently appointed Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, to seize absolute power in 1933, this was probably his most famous feat of clairvoyance, but also possibly the biggest mistake of his life, one which ultimately led to his assassination at the hands of the Nazi SA.

But it is doubtful that Hanussen (a Jewish music hall performer) would have ever found himself with such influential and dangerous acquaintances within the Nazi party, or that he would have had the ear of the superstitious Führer, if he hadn’t risen to fame and fortune as a result of a court case where he was on trial for misrepresentation and fraud.

During what had already proved to be a long drawn out case Erik decided the only way to break the judicial stalemate, was for him to recreate his psychic experiments live in the court room.

On the 27th of May 1930 after various psychic readings Hanussen presented a routine which would dramatically change the remainder of his life. He called the routine ‘Telepathic Events’

The basic routine consisted of an experiment in which various members of the prosecution submitted dates and places to Erik, and while in trance he was able to provide details of what events occurred on the given dates. A simple idea you may say but Erik was now fighting for his freedom and his knowledge of human psychology coupled with acting and performance skills honed over a life time of thinking on his feet, left the court dumbfounded.

The magistrate judging the case was convinced of Hanussen’s psychic ability and absolved him of all charges. The press then seized the story and catapulted him to fame and fortune as sensational headlines appeared in all the major European newspapers, headlines which read

“Miracle in Leitmeritz. Hanussen acquitted, clairvoyance exists, legally confirmed, Hanussen can peer into the future”.

It seems feasible to me that if Hanussen hadn’t performed his telepathic events routine on that day in 1930, which convinced the judge he had a legitimate psychic gift, Erik could well have ended up in a Czech prison cell, the European newspaper headlines would most likely have reported ‘Fraudulent Medium Convicted’, Hanussen would never have risen to stardom and come to the attention of some very dangerous people and history as we know it may have been very different.

Such is the power of Mentalism when presented correctly.

If you'd like to learn the version of Hanussen's 'Telepathic Events' I designed and have been performing since I first read the account of his famous court case, then please take a look at 'Hanussen's Demise'.

THE ‘P’ IN PSYCHIC IS SILENT

20/3/2017

But You Must Be Heard

There are no silent psychic/mentalism acts. You must use your voice, you must interact and therefore you must be heard. If you do a stage act then in my opinion it is imperative you have your own sound equipment.

Many performers have told me they ask the venue to supply microphones etc. This is OK but I have worked places where the sound equipment is about as effective as a baby monitor and I once worked a show in a marquee where the 'state of the art' sound system consisted of a wired handheld microphone which had a cable of about two meters in length.

My advice is buy the most expensive you can afford and stick with it. Always arrive at the venue a minimum of 45 mins before your gig, so you can set up and test your sound equipment.

You don’t have to break the bank to obtain a decent sound system and if you stick with your own system all the time, you'll know what to expect.

Can't afford thousands for the best on the market? Well the first thing to do is ask yourself do you need an £800 headset, £1500 wireless microphone system, a 5000 watt surround sound speaker system, £500 mixer deck, fully integrated, remote control digital MP3 player and a transit van to carry it all in.

If you are working national theatres to sold out houses of a thousand or more audience members, then yes you probably do, but then those theatres usually supply quality in-house equipment and require that you employ their resident sound engineer.

However if you are booking your own stage/cabaret shows in smaller venues then you can put together a pretty decent and effective sound system on a budget.

First things first, I'm talking about the spoken word here, maybe some intro and exit music and perhaps a bit of mood music during the show to set the scene. If you are performing a rock show or singing as part of your mentalism act that's a different ball game and you'll need to do your research into which systems are best for you.

But for a PA system used primarily so that you can be heard over the rustle of crisp packets and coughing, and for indoor venues, then you should be looking at a system which is able to deliver approximately two watts of output per audience member, all of which you can pick up on ebay for a reasonable price if you are willing to do a bit of research and searching.

I bought a reasonable quality duel channel UHF wireless microhone set which came with a lapel mike for £80, retail price new £170. I replaced the lapel mic with a medium range low profile Unidirectional, Cardioid headset microphone which I picked up again on ebay for £40 but which retails at approximately £100, and finally for £92 I bagged myself £385 worth of 600 watt active speaker with built in mixer and MP3 docking station Later I bought another passive extension speaker to go with it which cost £50 because it has no built in amp.

For my music I use an MP3 player with a built in bluetooth remote control.

These days with free online music editing software such as Audacity and royalty free music sites such as Purple Planet it is simple to add a bit of music to your shows.

The £262 system I have put together is very cheap compared to some on the market but it doesn't take up a lot of room in my car, I know how it works and I'm comfortable with it. So far, touch wood, it has never let me down.

Do a bit of research, everything you want to know is online, then take a look at ebay you may be surprise what you can pick up.

DIVERSIFICATION IN MAGIC

19/3/2017

IN MY LAST POST CALLED ‘FULL TIME PERFORMER’, I PROMISED TO SHARE MY THOUGHTS ON ‘MAGICAL DIVERSIFICATION’ SO HERE WE GO.

A few months back I was talking to a full time closeup magician who has been in the business for forty years when out of the blue he asked,

“are you getting many gigs? I am finding it more and more difficult to fill my diary these days”.

I have to say at the time I probably wasn’t getting as many performance gigs as he was but was probably a lot busier none the less.

This is because I believe to stay ahead as a full time magician or mentalist (especially in this day and age) you cannot rely on one style of performance.

Let me explain what I mean by that. For example the magician who will only work close up shows whether they be restaurants or weddings, limits his market and the guy that spends thousands on stage illusions and will only do stage shows, limits his market. Now don’t get me wrong, it is, or at least was, possible to make a good living only doing weddings, or only performing in theaters, but as magic props and once hard to learn secrets become readily available and as the performance market becomes flooded with wannabee full time performers, I believe, it is better to think laterally in order to have your fingers in enough magical pies so that if one area falls flat, you have something else that is still making money.

PLEASE DON’T CONFUSE DIVERSIFICATION WITH BEING A JACK OF ALL TRADES, THAT IS DEFINITELY NOT WHAT I MEAN, I BELIEVE SPECIALISED DIVERSIFICATION IS THE KEY.

For example the jack of all trades magician is the guy who has ‘Magic for Every Occasion’ printed on his business cards. He does coins, ropes, sponge balls, cards, balloon modeling and mind reading in his close up sets. He mixes dove magic, mentalism, escapology, juggling and illusions in his stage shows and makes himself available for kids shows when required.

The magician who is a master of his trade, may specialise in just card magic, but he performs it in close up, can perform it on stage, lectures on the subject, gives lessons to beginners and maybe even writes books or releases card magic DVD’s.

Obviously that is a simplified definition but as a full time performer who has chosen to specialise in mentalism alone, I have discovered that the need to eat has stimulated my lateral thinking. To give you an idea of what I am talking about here is a list of the different areas I work in at present.

As a Mentalist for the corporate market:
• Full Cabaret/Stage Mind Reading Show
• Close Up Strolling Mind Reading
• Nonverbal communications Lecture
• Perception and Persuasion Lecture
• Memory Techniques Lecture/Workshop

As a Psychic Entertainer, all of the above plus:

• Group tarot readings
• Tarot Parties
• Private Tarot Consultation
• Tarot lecture and Demonstration
• Tarot teach in and Psychic development workshops

For the magical market

• Multiple lectures
• Publication of Multiple Ebooks
• Design, Manufacture and sale of Mentalism Props
• The Release of instant download DVD’s

At present that is fourteen strings to my bow and I am always looking for other outlets for my creative juices. So when gigs are thin on the ground, which happens at certain times of the year I still have an income. Or when gigs come in that I really don’t want to do (I’m getting picky as I get older) I can turn them down or pass them on without worrying about cash flow.

THAT IS THE WONDER OF DIVERSIFICATION.

FULL-TIME PERFORMER

17/3/2017

Quite Recently I received an email from an amateur magician who asked me "how hard is it to pack up the day job and become a full time performer"? that question prompted me to write this post.

The other night I had a hideous nightmare.

In my dream I worked in the city, I had a company car, a nice office, and earned a good wage. HORRIBLE!

If I had ever been successful in the above scenario (and yes I did work in an office for many years), desperation and the need to eat would have never led me to where I am now. I would never have experienced the need to concentrate my efforts on becoming a commercial performer; I wouldn’t be enjoying the life I now live.

Many people I know who appear to have successful careers, often hate their jobs, suffer from work related stress, complain about the 9 – 5 and are too tired at the end of a working day to enjoy the vast amounts of money they earn.

Most of them tell me how lucky I am but they don’t realise how incredibly hard I have worked to get to this stage of my life, to be honest luck has very little to do with it (I wish it did).

Many of them say I am very brave due to the insecurity this life style offers; after all it is common knowledge that show business is fickle. Well in my opinion security is an illusion especially when your livelihood is in the hands of another person or people, and to be honest the thought of someone else allocating a monetary value to my time sends a shudder up my spine.

Your boss may think an hour of your life is worth 10, 20, 30 pounds, personally I consider my time very precious and worth at least 200 – 500 pounds an hour. The difficulty in this business is convincing other people you are worth that much.

SO YOU WANT TO WORK AS A FULL TIME PERFORMER EH!

Dwell on this for a moment ….. No sick pay, no paid holidays, no nice clean office, no regular wage at the end of the month, no pension plan, no health care plan, no Christmas bonus, no bank holidays.

If you are booked to do a gig and you get the flu, the runs, a migraine or are absolutely exhausted because your three year old has been awake all night, you can’t call in sick because you won’t get paid.

As a full time performer, only 10 – 20 percent of your time will actually be spent standing up doing what you love best. The rest is marketing, administration, networking, cold calling, tax returns, rehearsals and miles and miles of travelling in all weathers at all times of the year.

STILL INTERESTED ……….. GOOD.

On the flip side, there is the satisfaction of getting paid and sometimes paid well for doing what you love; you will meet hundreds if not thousands of people from all walks of life, the majority of whom, contrary to what you may believe, will be nice people who want to be entertained. You will have time (as part of your working day) to feed your creativity, expand your knowledge and develop your art.

Not only that but any stress you suffer will be the healthy kind, you will find yourself feeling less run down and more alive, which in turn promotes better physical well being and therefore health.

You will spend more time with your family and friends and will stand out from the crowd as someone who is in charge of their own destiny.

It’s not easy, there is a lot of work to do and there will be periods where you will wish you were back on the 9 – 5 grind, but hey anything worth having has to be worked for. You’ll also need to set targets, make plans, suffer sacrifices and most importantly, in my opinion, cultivate the art if diversification.

I’ll be talking about diversification as a performer in my next post. Until then I’ll leave you with a quote, from a very good friend and full time performer Chris Hare.

“I don’t know how anybody who works 9 – 5 can possibly acquire a decent golf handicap”

Sums it up for me.

SMILE AND PICK A CARD

15/3/2017

OH NO NOT ANOTHER DAMNED BORING PICK A CARD TRICK!

Before I say anything else I’d like to stress that since I performed my first paid magic show in 1975 at the age of eleven, I like most magicians have, or in my case, did employ playing cards extensively in my shows.

They are quite simply one of the most versatile and portable props a magician can carry on his or her person. Since they first became popular with magicians in the nineteenth century some amazing gaffs, sleights and routines have been invented by some of the most creative minds in magic and every year the boundaries seem to be pushed further.

But, and it is a big but, it seems to me that in the recent history of magic, at least in my living memory (52 years at the time of writing) the magic fraternity has become obsessed with cards and card magic. You only have to look at the websites of online dealers to realise that effects and routines with cards out number just about every other branch of magic.

As a performer for well over 30 years now, it has become somewhat obvious to me that towards the end of the twentieth century and with the advance of electronic multimedia home entertainment systems, the popularity of playing cards as a source of fun and games for both adults and children, began to dwindle (in the UK at least) and cards no longer being the household objects they were during the 19th century, have instead become synonymous with magicians and sleight of hand which is of course why many mentalists refuse to use them.

Unfortunately, that in my opinion, isn’t the only problem and this will probably upset a few of the card men out there, the simple fact is that the demise of the music halls which drove magicians to the close up table, has resulted in a hundred years of card wielding performers subjecting audiences around the world to the pick-a-card trick and worse than that, the strange new trend of multiple card cutting (the Cybil Cut, sometimes called the Dynamo Shuffle), a display of dexterity which has nothing to do with magic, but instead falls into the category of juggling.

Of course there is nothing wrong with juggling, it is a very skillful art, but it simply isn’t magic.

These of course are only my opinions, observations gleaned from thirty years of professional performances and they could be completely wrong, but assuming you agree with some of what I’ve just said, how do we lift our pick a card effects out of the realm of the juggler into the world of magic and mystery, how do we take 52 boring pieces of cardboard and use them to create a piece of emotional theatre, in simple terms how do we avoid the pick-a-card boredom factor?

Answer, share the ancient mystical history surrounding playing cards in the introductory patter you use for your standard card routines, and then personalise the cards chosen by utilising a quick and easy fortune telling/mystical reading system.

This is known as Cartomancy.

Please let’s make an effort to put the mystery back, believe me with just a small amount of thought, any magician can add an emotional hook to his or her pick a card tricks and I guarantee your audiences will thank you for it.

“WITHOUT PROPER PRESENTATION, THE BEST SLEIGHT OF HAND IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FEAT OF JUGGLING.”
NATE LEIPZIG

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