Attention
by Pavel Vošahlík

Understand human attention, plus a selection of tricks.

This book has a most wonderful first part with the best summary of attention mechanisms I am aware of in any magic book. A better understanding of these human attention mechanisms allows one to become a more effective magician by clarifying how attention, misdirection, and memory work. Portions of these are covered by other authors, such as Juan Tamariz, but here you get a very nice and complete summary.

Pavel Vošahlík was a friend of Lubor Fiedler, a like-minded creative magician.

The trick section includes card tricks and mostly math- or logic-based tricks.

The original book in Czech was translated to English by František Kitzberger.

1st edition 2021 in Czech, 1st english edition 2026, PDF 70 pages.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Table of Contents
• ATTENTION
  • Attention Can Be Focused On
  • Attention and perception of seeing
  • Direction of a Spectator's attention
  • Unwanted Drawing of Attention
  • Nomenclature
  • Literature
• TRICKS
  • Postcard from Hell: The magician places a cut-up postcard in front of a spectator and asks him to reassemble it. He explains that the postcard comes from a castle where, according to legend, the entrance to Hell lies beneath the chapel. Once the postcard has been put together, it reveals an image of The Dancing Skeletons from 1493. But there is one more surprise: in the end, the spectator discovers that the card was sent by the Devil himself.
  • Mind and Matter
  • Antimagic square
    • Building of an antimagic square
    • List of chosen antimagic squares
    • Antimagic square made of dice
  • Triumph 2000
  • Twisted lady: Magician shows a card wallet and says it contains 4 queens. Spectators name one of the queens. Cards are removed from the wallet and counted/displayed. One of the cards is facing up. It is the queen that the spectators named. The trick can be repeated immediately.
  • A Good Advice: The magician takes a shuffled deck of cards from the spectators. He takes the top card, shows it to the spectators, and inserts it into the middle of the deck. He then covers the deck with an opaque handkerchief and places it on the table. He asks one of the spectators to turn all the cards above the inserted card face up. Since the task seems difficult, the magician offers a piece of “good advice.” If the spectator follows it, the task is completed easily.
  • Doppelgänger
  • Spelling Trick: Magician removes from the deck a portion of cards. Spectator takes one of them and replaces it into the deck. Magician shuffles the cards and hands them to the spectator to name what card he selected and perform an AUSTRALIAN COUNT (DOWN-UNDER DEAL). For each card laid down, one letter of the selection is named. In the end, only one card remains in the spectator’s hand - the chosen one.
  • Medium: The magician asks three spectators, one by one, to choose and remember a card from a shuffled deck. When they return their cards, the magician shuffles the deck, places it on the table, and steps away from it. He asks his assistant to find the cards on his behalf. The assistant spreads the cards, looks at the first spectator, and immediately pushes out that spectator’s card. He then does the same for the other two spectators.
  • Invisible Die: Spectators A, B, and C each select a card bearing a number. They then roll an invisible die and multiply the number on their card by the value they supposedly rolled. The results are written down on a sheet of paper. Although the die was invisible, the magician is able to determine both the number rolled and the number printed on each chosen card.
  • Eye of a BlackJack: The magician shows a packet of eight cards and asks the spectator to take three. The magician then turns over the remaining cards, revealing that each of them bears the image of an eye. The meaning of the eye is revealed when the spectator turns over his cards. They are three sevens, giving a total of 21. In Czech, the number 21 is called oko, which also means “eye”.
  • Telegnosis: Spectator A thinks of an integer smaller than 10, X ≤ 10. He adds 12 to this number and deals the corresponding number of cards into a pile. Spectator B does the same: he thinks of an integer smaller than 10, Y ≤ 10, adds 12, and deals that many cards into his own pile. Although this seems impossible, the magician knows which cards occupy positions X and Y in the respective piles. Importantly, the magician does not know the values of X and Y themselves.
  • Vision: A shuffled deck is dealt into two piles by one of the two assisting spectators. Each spectator then takes one pile and deals it into two further piles, creating four piles in total. The magician takes a piece of cardboard and, relying only on his intuition, writes down the names of the cards he believes are on top of the piles. The top cards are then turned over, proving that his intuition was correct.
  • 11 Butterflies: Three spectators eliminate cards from the dealt packets until only the last cards remain. These are revealed to be the very cards the magician predicted from the beginning.
  • Revelation: The magician separates the deck into three portions. The top and bottom portions are set aside, while the middle portion is shuffled and dealt into four piles. At this point, no one knows which cards are on top of the piles. The magician then shuffles four special cards into one of the set-aside portions. Through the subsequent handling, these special cards arrive on top of duplicate packets. The special cards are blank, with the values of the cards in the neighbouring packets written on them by hand.
  • Lightning
  • Magical Product: The spectator uses a calculator to multiply the numbers shown on five cards. The result is then found to match the numbers on the cards lying untouched on the table. What makes this so puzzling is that one of the factors was chosen freely by a spectator and therefore could not have been known beforehand.
  • Number Cocktail
  • Dichotomic Sorting Used to Move the Card to the Desired Spot
  • Aces again: The magician deals the cards into four piles. Three spectators each take one pile, and the last pile is taken by the magician. Everyone then starts turning the cards face up one by one. When only one card remains face down, the face-up cards are discarded. The final card is revealed to be an ace.