Magic & Mentalism: page 390
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Bold Bet
Unknown Mentalist
This is a Print & Perform routine.
Bold Bet is a powerful routine where you bet a $100 bill (you can use any denomination bill, of course) that you will be able to accurately influence the thoughts of your participant. In each routine 5 poker-size cards are used (you can print these 5 cards in any size you may want).
There are three different routines explained with different themes.
1. Bond Routine : You use 5 well-known Bond actors for this routine. The participant chooses one of the actors and you prove in a very novel manner that you have successfully influenced your participant....
Macabre and Mental Mysteries
Charles W. Cameron
Excerpt from the foreword:
I prefer subtleties rather than sleights and the effects in this book follow the same pattern. You may be assured that none of the effects are 'pipe dreams' ... they have all been audience tested. There is a tremendous interest these days in the Strange and Unusual and the contents of this book will, I hope, enable you to convince your audience that you possess curious powers and unusual abilities.
Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Part One: Satanic Sorcery
- Introduction
- Riches By Sorcery
- Spirit Photography
- Cards Of Horror
- Saint Or Devil?
- Stab In The Dark ...
A Counterblast to Spookland or Glimpses of the Marvellous
Psyche
This is the answer of spirit mediums to the book Spookland which revealed some tricks and spirit medium frauds.
Excerpt from the Preface:
The popular mind has been more or less strongly exercised of late by the exposure of a supposed fraudulent séance given by the well-known materializing Sensitive of Sydney. This "exposure" has been all the more astonishing because of the long record of successes by this Sensitive in the old world, and also in our Southern Hemisphere; striking and undoubted successes dating back from mere girlhood, and based upon evidence profuse and apparently reliable, both...
Stage Cool
Michael P. Lair
A collection of cool magic effects to heat up your stage performance.
Table of Contents
- Dedication
- Purple / Green Santa
- Author
- Sparkle Matches: Matches are produced lit in your magic act, with electrical sparks showering off them. The sparks accentuate the lit match productions.
- Confetti Packets: Produce a burst of shiny mylar confetti at any time during your magic act.
- Throw Streamer Packet: A colorful burst of throw streamers appears at any point in your act. This setup makes them easy to steal from any pocket, table, scarf, or any place you wish.
- Funbrella: At the end of a scarf...
Eyrie
Mark Lemon
You, a spectator, a deck of cards, a miracle!
A spectator shuffles a deck of cards, you instruct them to hold the cards face up, under the table, so that only they can see them. Despite these test conditions, you apparently display a genuine feat of 'remote viewing' by attempting to name each card in turn, as if you are somehow able to 'see through the table'. With an accuracy way beyond the odds you are able to prove to your audience that they are witnessing a real demonstration of 'psychic' ability and what you claim to be true, must be possible.
This effect will completely 'blow away'...
Hot Ice 3: The Kosky Cut
Ken de Courcy
Here Ken de Courcy took a clever cut effect by Gerald Kosky, changed it, and altered it to make it completely self-contained and also impromptu. Whilst doing this, Ken hit on another use and here you are getting two for the price of one.
EFFECT:
A borrowed pack is shuffled by the owner, then the magician extracts two cards from it, hands the cards to the spectator and asks him to place them into a convenient pocket. The deck is placed on the table and the spectator is requested to cut off about two-thirds and lay it face-up alongside the remainder. He now cuts the larger packet roughly...
My Creepy Card
Biagio Fasano
The title of this eBook hides its inspiration ... The effect is totally impromptu, self-working, quick and easy to perform (only eight cards are used), does not require any kind of card magic technique, and introduces the spectator to the possibility of secretly choosing whether to lie or tell the truth in response to the few questions that the mentalist will ask him during the experiment. In spite of all this, a merely thought-out card will be punctually found at the end of the experiment.
Noting the possible whispering in the room (especially if there are fellow magicians present, I say...
My Creepy Card (Italian)
Biagio Fasano
Il titolo di questo eBook, che letteralmente significa “La Mia Carta Inquietante”, ne nasconde l’ispirazione ... L’effetto è totalmente impromptu, di tipo automatico, facile e veloce ad eseguirsi (si usano solamente otto carte), non richiede alcun tipo di tecnica cartomagica ed introduce per lo spettatore la possibilità di scegliere segretamente se mentire o dire il vero in risposta alle poche domande che il Mentalista gli rivolgerà durante l’esperimento. Nonostante tutto questo, una carta solamente pensata verrà puntualmente ritrovata al termine dell’esperimento!
E la...
Connected
Renzo Grosso
A very effective parlor or stage effect. Cards or tickets can be used, or ESP cards or even tickets were drawn on the spot by the spectator on which to carry out an effective act of reading in the final revealing phase.
The spectator receives 4 cards, and shuffles them several times, at his discretion, while the mentalist has his back turned: at the end, he will be able to describe the correct position of all the cards.
To simplify the final phase for the performer, we propose the use of an ingenious "homemade" gimmick, which allows you to operate calmly, without fear of forgetfulness...
Triplets 6
Gregg Webb
This is an all-mentalism issue, and the first essay is about the various kinds of mentalism, to help you describe your "powers" to your audience. These include Thought Reading, Remote Viewing, Precognition, Drawing Duplication, Clairvoyance, Psychometry, Living and Dead Tests, and also Metal Bending, and Psychic Healing (Faith Healing) and unusual "powers" such as Handwriting Analysis. Calling your feats by the correct type of power will go a long way in establishing yourself as an expert.
The next essay is about presentations that may be new to you so that your act will have more thought...
The Hermit Magazine Vol. 2 No. 6 (June 2023)
Scott Baird
EFFECTS
- Ryan Schlutz (author of False Anchors and Unanchored), presents RNG, his updated take on Card at Any Sum.
- A returning contributor to the magazine, Bill Citino shares his routine Making a Difference, a new variation of a Scott Robinson routine.
- A Nightmare in Red and Blue by Scott Baird, which is an improved handling of an old Don Nielson and Karl Fulves trick from Pallbearer's Review. I also teach my Flash Ribbon effect later in the issue.
- June is also Tomás Giammarco's first appearance in The Hermit, and he shares his routine Strange Concordance 23332, of which I am a huge fan! It's based...
Harry Anderson's Square Dancing
Jon Racherbaumer
A selective history of magic squares and routines and performances which are somewhat unusual and different from the regular magic square presentation of 'give me a number and I write down a magic square of that number'.
Table of Contents
- Brother Can You Paradigm? (Jon Racherbaumer)
- Harried History of the Magic Square
- B.A. (Before Annemann)
- 1930 – Present
- Wise-Guy Square
- Kick-Starters
- Okey-Sidokey
- Charlier Shuffle
- Miscellaneous Matrix Trix
- Phoning Marrakech
- Squaring the Deal
- Upside Down
- Cool Things about the Magic Square
- Harry Ending
- References
1st...
Indian Cups and Balls Primer
Sam Dalal
Like the Billiard Balls, and Linking Rings the Indian Cups and Balls have become a classic of Magic. The apparatus is "designed" exclusively for Magic... (like the Linking rings), one does not come across such things in everyday life. While this may not find favour with many performers, whose idea of magic is to perform miracles with "everyday" objects,...their very design makes possible miracles of a type not possible with many other objects. For unlike Silk Cabbies, and Ghost Tubes, there is nothing fake about the apparatus itself...but their shape and construction make possible a surprising...
Noon Stack
Unknown Mentalist
The Noon Stack is the only stack in the world with three official names. It is also called the Midnight Deck or the Moon Stack. You can either start learning this stack exactly at 12 noon or exactly at 12 midnight, any day.
Okay, on a more serious note, Noon Stack is a simple algorithmic stack that forms a nice memorized deck. Given a card, you can know its position and given a position, you can know the card at that position. And literally speaking, if you start learning this stack at 12 noon (or 12 midnight), you can completely get this down in less than an hour by about 1 pm (or 1 am)....
Going GaGa
Graham Hey
Going GaGa is a new ebook by Graham Hey containing some brand-new material and a couple of little-known classics brought up to date. They're all easy to do and brilliantly effective. You'll probably have most things you need to do these tricks - cards, duplicates, envelopes, etc.
Going GaGa is a great mentalism effect and a total 'magician fooler'. It's clever and easy to do. The performer hands a prediction to a spectator. Two spectators are given a pile of cards each. The first spectator shuffles his cards and selects any one. He is handed a list of celebrities and counts down - if he...
Candles
Michael P. Lair
Effects with Fantasio's vanishing and appearing candles.
Excerpt from the introduction:
Fantasio’s vanishing and appearing candles are in every serious magician’s bag of tricks. Lit candles add suspense and romance to an evening of magic. Audiences love fire!
Candles is dedicated to Fantasio, and everyone who has enjoyed his magical products over the past few decades. It is also dedicated to the new generation of magicians who are just getting acquainted with the Fantasio line. The best days of magic are ahead of you! May books like Candles, and other books on Fantasio magic, inspire...
The Magical World (second series)
Max Sterling
Max Sterling discontinued his weekly magic journal The Magical World in May 1911. After two years he restarted it for another period less than a year long. This second series from June 14th, 1913 until February 4th, 1914, is included in this PDF, 582 pages. It is not easy to publish a weekly conjuring periodical.
Number 1 (June 4th, 1913)
- Protection
- Between Ourselves
- American Notes
- What Others are Doing - Houdini
- Practial Magic - Cut and Restored Hat
- Pithy Patter - Torn Strip of Paper
- In Open Council
- Whereabouts this Week
- Cards - A Pre-arranged Pack
- For Beginners - Handkerchief Dyeing Extraordinary ...
Mentalism and Communication
Renzo Grosso
The presentation of a magic effect is linked to many aspects, from the personality of the performer to the type of audience, to the type of show to be staged. Mentalism is only a pretext, it lends itself better than other spells to the discussion, especially on the definition of the character, the construction of the story, on the revelation. What we will analyze is not only useful for those who want to be a mentalist, but it is a stimulus to the realization of any magical effect and to improve one's communication process, with anyone on any subject. It's a mini-course in communication/NLP...
The Frauds of Spiritualism
Stanley LeFevre Krebs
Stanley Krebs was very successful in revealing the fraudulent practices of spirit mediums. One of the tools he employed was a pocket mirror that he used to see what was going on under the table.
In this series of articles in Suggestion he describes various sittings and encounters with spirit mediums such as the Bangs sisters, Dr. Henry Slade, Pierrie L.O.A. Keeler, and the Campbell brothers. Included are some comments, letters, and editorials from Suggestion journal relating to this topic.
An excerpt of this material was published in Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.
1st edition 1901, published in Suggestion Journal;...
Spookland
T. Shekleton Henry
Spirit materialization and fraudulent mediums.
A record of research and experiment in a much-talked-of realm of mystery, with a review and criticism of the so-called spiritualistic phenomena of spirit materialization and hints and illustration as to the possibility of artificially producing the same.
Excerpt from the author's preface:
In placing the following pages before the public, the author is actuated by two motives: - Firstly, that recent occurrences in our midst, relating to some of the so-called phenomena of Spiritualism, and questioning the evidence on which these phenomena...
Description of some Trick Methods used by Miss Bangs
Stanley LeFevre Krebs
The Bangs sisters, Miss May Bangs and Miss Lizzie Bangs worked out of an apartment in Chicago. The author describes in detail a sitting he had with one of the Bangs sisters, and how a sealed envelope placed between two slates could be 'written on by the spirits'.
Includes illustrations with detailed descriptions of the modus operandi.
This is an excerpt from a series of articles in Suggestion journal.
1st edition 1901, published in Journal of the Society for Psychical Research; PDF 11 pages.

