Reading people is an essential part of performing a mentalism routine. The performer then proceeds to answer the question before ever taking it out of the envelope. Question and AnswerĪ mentalist effect involves audience members writing a question and sealing it in an envelope.
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This section of the book tells you how to set up a publicity stunt and perform it safely. Many popular mentalists have performed publicity stunts performing seemingly impossible acts, such as walking over broken glass without getting hurt. Knowing how to predict someone’s reaction can help you perform your tricks effectively. This book covers information from many scientific principles that can help you predict how a spectator will react to something they see. This book will teach you skills to make your performance more believable. Many mentalist effects utilize psychological principles to perform tricks based on how people in an audience will perceive what they are seeing. Performance and PresentationĪ big part of mentalism is the performance methods used. You can do this through mnemonics and other mental systems that help you train your brain to memorize information quickly and effortlessly. Mentalism requires you to be able to memorize information quickly while performing. Mastering card tricks can add a lot to a performance. This book covers many of the popular card tricks that were developed by top mentalists, such as: Mentalists can use many card tricks in their performances. The mentalist then uses a technique to figure out what passage was read by the spectator. Book TestsĪ book test is a mentalism effect where a spectator in the audience is invited to read a random passage of their choice from a book. BlindfoldsĪ blindfold is a mentalist effect where the performer identifies random objects chosen by an audience.
Billetsīillets are a clairvoyant performance technique for reading messages in an envelope or on a folded-up piece of paper. Each of the elements discussed are key components to the performance art aspect of mentalism. This book comprehensively covers many introductory components of mentalism. Read our review of the 13 Steps to Mentalism book here. Since this book has so much depth, it’s often considered a must-read when learning mentalism. It covers many topics relating to mental magic that are useful for beginners and can even be used for reference by more advanced mentalists. This book is considered to be the bible for mentalists.