Reviews: Read What Rolando Santos Is Saying

The Bammo Tarodiction Toolbox

reviewed by Rolando Santos
Rating: ★★★★★ (Date Added: Friday 10 July, 2020)

Review from Linking Ring, March 2018:

After reading The Bammo Tarodiction Toolbox, I am convinced that former Magic Magazine columnist Bob Farmer has a math degree hidden somewhere in his wall, even though he says he flunked math in school. Less than a year after publishing the exhaustively researched Bammo Ten Card Deal Dossier, Farmer has put out another brilliant work that delves into a mathematical card sorting system seldom used in magic. With the Tarodiction Tool Box, you can secretly arrange cards in front of spectators and stack cards in Tamariz, Aronson, and Si Stebbins order in less than two minutes. It works with a specific tarot deck or any regular deck once you code it. The system is easy to see and understand.

Farmer painstakingly thought through the math so we don’t have to, and includes an entire section for math mavens who are interested, along with fifteen effects. However, you don’t have to understand the math to do the magic. The effects all include some counting, but the plots Farmer includes are structured so it doesn’t feel like it.

The manuscript also includes a hard to find, gambling routine called “Tsunami.” According to Farmer, “Tsunami” is “Variations of a single effect combined for a full performance. A card is selected and located, but there is gambling, mentalism, and some hustles along the way.” You bet the spectator one hundred dollars that you can discover his mentally selected card. Initially you lose, but eventually, you are able to win all the money back.

Bammo Tarodiction Toolbox also has one of the few excellent bizarre magic presentations I have seen written up in a general magic booklet. The premise for that trick is the prediction that famous occultist Aleister Crowley wrote the night he died is finally going to be explained using tarot cards.

Tarodiction Toolbox requires more than a little preparation. Most of what you need can be found in high-end art supply stores or online at Amazon. Don’t be put off by the prep work; the deck will last for years once you create it. Don’t let the math scare you off, either. Don’t worry about the why just follow the method laid out. Serious card workers and the math experts of the magic world will have a field day with the concepts. For the rest of us, this is something we can use to fool our fellow magicians as well as our audiences.

Highly recommended.