I have found a tool with which to performs miracles

[Senex]

Every year I receive an invitation from the local pagans to perform (for free) at the Beltaine festival which happens to be close to where I live. Every year I think about not only being able to return to perform there but also to do a routine that only uses their pagan stuff. The festival has many vendors that sell wands (it's true), daggers, tarot cards, mini-cauldrons, crystals and other woo stuff. It's like an outdoor magic festival except none of their stuff is pregimmicked. I'm always looking for ways to levitate wands in particular. The fantasy would be to ask for wands as I walk into the audience and levitating some from one hand to the other and hand it back to the audience member and other wands say I'm not feeling the magic based most likely based on wand weight or gender of the audience member for laughs.

That's why I bought this gimmick called Innercircle AKA Mesika's Loops from Lou Tannen's mail order. Holy smokes -- this isn't good for what I wanted (sunlight bad) but it can do miracles under the right conditions. If you are like me and dabbled in mentalism you should consider owning this. I wish l had this in college. It's real magic in that you use borrowed items and can be surrounded by the audience who can literally be touching the back of your hands during a levitation and you will be clean afterward with nothing to get rid of. You can scare people with your ability using this.

I have to say loops don't last forever and if you use this trick often you will have to have a loop budget. You can make your own with material Mesika sells but get the innercircle first because it contains a method for transport that you can't make yourself and really need to have.

 

[Garrette]

A bit close to a reveal, I think, but I agree.

 

[Senex]

A bit close to a reveal, I think, but I agree.

It is fun, isn't it? It's not a reveal because no one introduces their trick as "loops" so you wouldn't even know when you see it used and the marketing of the product is much more revealing than anything I said.

When I was in college I worked at the school bookstore and they had two shin-digs a year (once each semester). Every party I was expected to perform some magic/mentalism (a quiet-partying semi-circle would form). I spent time and money trying to pull this off eight times in my college career. Coming up with new stuff for about an hour twice a year is very hard when you have the same audience. I even did a little hypnosis the last year. This product would have been my favorite piece of equipment if I had it then. I could have used it at every party and each time the trick would look radically different to the audience.

I was close to having my pick of the ladies at those parties and this trick would have done it for me and put me over the top. Don't be the guy who comes up one trick short.

Anybody have a similar story they would like to share?

 

[Garrette]

You hit on the difficulty of being an amateur. How does the saying go?

Professional magicians perform the same few tricks expertly for different audiences. Amateurs perform every-varying tricks poorly for the same audience.

My The-Trick-That-Got-Me-A-Chick story involves a completely impromptu combination of two effects with quarters and matches. One involved apparently stealing a quarter from a fist before she could close it; the other involved teleporting that quarter across the room into a matchbook I had previously burned while miraculously restoring one of the matches.

Being evil is fun.

 

[Senex]

You hit on the difficulty of being an amateur. How does the saying go?

Professional magicians perform the same few tricks expertly for different audiences. Amateurs perform every-varying tricks poorly for the same audience.

My The-Trick-That-Got-Me-A-Chick story involves a completely impromptu combination of two effects with quarters and matches. One involved apparently stealing a quarter from a fist before she could close it; the other involved teleporting that quarter across the room into a matchbook I had previously burned while miraculously restoring one of the matches.

Being evil is fun.

Do you mind if I include that in the book I'm writing?

Tried and proven stuff is gold.

 

[Garrette]

Feel free, but it isn't the full story. The trick only closed the deal that I had already made lots of progress on.

 

[Stray Cat]

A trick that's guaranteed to get you laid is the old "does this hanky smell of chloroform to you?" trick*.




* This is a bad taste joke and I neither engage in such acts nor condone the actions of anyone who does.

 

[Garrette]

A trick that's guaranteed to get you laid is the old "does this hanky smell of chloroform to you?" trick*.




* This is a bad taste joke and I neither engage in such acts nor condone the actions of anyone who does.

And this is definitely exposure.

 

[Senex]

It's interesting the different motivations I have had in my life for performing magic. It was rarely to woo a girl one on one no matter what stage of life I was in. I started to enjoy performing magic around 8 or 9 years old and when I discovered Lou Tannen's in NYC I also found a place to spend all my birthday money. My parents, or at least my dad, would take me to NYC for the day. My dad told me Lou Tannen's was only for magicians so we would separate he would meet me at the Pizza Place a few blocks away in an hour. I thought he was being cool trusting me to shop/negotiate the big city by myself. When I got older I realized those were adult videos in those mysterious plastic bags he would have when we met up. He shopped for magic supplies as well while I was shopping.

When I was young I couldn't own enough gimmicked stuff. Why do it with sleights when there is a cheat that makes you look to have crazy skill. I had some suspicious looking chop cups and plastic cases with colored dots. Then when I was a Junior and Senior in high school I created obsessive routines requiring me to plant cards/coins/any small object on people's person or stuff (being in the music department missing cards often turned up in the bells of horns or woodwinds or locked music cases that weren't as airtight as one would think against a motivated teenager. I went off the directions and made the patter and my own and combined effects for more. I'm sometimes a little clumsy or under rehearsed perhaps but I am good at misdirection.

Sometime during my senior/junior year I decided I wanted to be Kreskin. At that point I believed Kreskin may have had some type of special power of sensitivity that he had and I could learn as well. I purchased one book on mentalism and Kreskin's act was completely deconstructed as well as cold reading and midnight seances/readings for the ladies only. Now that midnight show for ladies only, if alcohol was served, seemed to me a good chance to meet the ladies but those types of shows disappeared before I was old enough to perform any. Discovering Kreskin couldn't perform ESP any better than myself was a blow for about 15 minutes and then I was cool with it because now I was certain I could do anything he did. I put some mentalism in my show. In college some parties were all mentalism and the magic tricks I did just for groups of partying people who didn't know about my mentalism. I had separate audiences depending on if they enjoyed relaxing substances like wine too much. Traditional magic for the straight arrows.

Ironically, the two women who liked me the most and I considered long term relationships with both hated my performing magic. They weren't big on me playing much chess either but they HATED magic. Too bad. They both could have provided me with misdirection with their attractive appendages but would not assist me in any manner when it came to magic. I wonder if they ever knew those were included in my list of deal breakers.

I stopped performing for many (like 15 years altogether except for a couple of one time routines for complete strangers. This year I feel a little excited for making a routine for outside parties this summer. It will be heavy on using water bottles and cans that I didn't use last year and other items that might be "discovered" in garbage cans or the side of the road and some coin tricks and card tricks that start with sleight and end with that kind of help you can only get from Tannen's.

Like Garrette said it's tough when you have to perform for the same audiences every year. My best friend told me last year I have to up my game this year because I was getting sloppy performing in my old age. There is little that is worse than a lousy magician so I am taking his words to heart and opening my wallet again for a gizmo or two and vowing to practice more.



Any similar stories?

 

[Senex]

In keeping with this thread being all about me I have a request about helping me with my patter (that is a dated word, isn't it?) this summer. The audience that consists of my friends, which is 99% of my usual audience these days, knows me as a skeptic. I'm going to go with a telekinesis and coin(s) through bottle(s) motif this year. I want to explain to my audience that moving objects with your mind is obviously impossible. But after saying that I'm going to do just that. I never wish to lie. I can and likely will say the object never moved but your perception of it moving was tricked. That would be as far south of the truth as I'd go on that level.

What I'm thinking is creating some sort of bulloney about being tied into the multiverse. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, America's astrophysicist, who does a wonderful job on that Cosmos show, believes in the multiverse. If he does we all should have to consider it. Why is gravity so weak after all?

This is true, people that should know better because I always say their is no real magic, yet they believe I can "meditate" and shut my pulse off. No one can do that. It's a trick but I can name dozens of smart people including my school nurse sister who screams at me to knock it off when I perform it because she feels I may die somehow.

I need a multiverse woo explanation for moving my friends keys, glasses (basically anything) this summer. I'm really good at making people believe I'm capable of odd stuff.

 

[Senex]

I just happened to read this.

I lived in Atlanta at an apartment complex for almost 5 years. My apartment overlooked the pool area that had a payphone. I used to give "hot readings" on that phone often. I'd call and say my name was William Crystal and calling back someone who was a member of the "psychic friends network" who just called. The person answering the phone who I knew many personal details about would say "That person isn't here" and I would say I'll give you a free reading.

People are naive.

 

[Garrette]

Senex, the below quotation is from Bob Cassidy a while back on the green forum. It is advice as opposed to actual patter (which it would do not good to provide you, anyway).

The point is, that the effect is consistent with the claim being made. (ie. contact with the dead demonstrated via revelation of information seemingly unknowable to the medium- or to anyone else, for that matter) Thus it is believable. As applied to mentalism, the principium simply means that the performer himself defines the parameters of his claimed abilities. Since his proof is the material he performs, his effects must stay within those parameters in order to be believable. He thereby creates the illusion of doing what "real" mindreaders do. My own parameters are defined by a concept I call the "Web." It is a subscript that underlies all of my presentations. A mentalist’s persona must have depth that goes beyond the theatrical stage. If you think the only time you have to appear psychic is when you're on stage, you will never develop a believable image.

I like your "I never wish to lie," but I would caveat it to be more like my own "I won't lie about what I do except when I'm in show mode; then I will lie my ass off. Maybe." (Don't forget the "maybe;" it's important.)

So first define what you are representing: A telekinetic? A physicist who figured out the equations to warp physics to do apparent magic? Maybe similar to a warp speed concept: we don't actually travel faster than light, we just give the appearance by folding the universe back on itself to shorten the distance. Your multiverse idea might be the same: It appears I am making this coin move magically there, but what I am doing is much more interesting; I am showing you different coins from different universes chronologically so that it appears the same one has moved.

 

[Senex]

Senex, the below quotation is from Bob Cassidy a while back on the green forum. It is advice as opposed to actual patter (which it would do not good to provide you, anyway).



I like your "I never wish to lie," but I would caveat it to be more like my own "I won't lie about what I do except when I'm in show mode; then I will lie my ass off. Maybe." (Don't forget the "maybe;" it's important.)

So first define what you are representing: A telekinetic? A physicist who figured out the equations to warp physics to do apparent magic? Maybe similar to a warp speed concept: we don't actually travel faster than light, we just give the appearance by folding the universe back on itself to shorten the distance. Your multiverse idea might be the same: It appears I am making this coin move magically there, but what I am doing is much more interesting; I am showing you different coins from different universes chronologically so that it appears the same one has moved.

That's the kind of thinking I'm looking for but the different coins from different universes would be a tough sell. I'll more likely mumble something and improv on feedback.

But the truth is I have some new stuff this summer to perform and I am looking forward to it. In Wiseman's book, 59 seconds, he says always have three things to look forward to doing. This is one for me.

 

[Senex]

double post, sorry

 

[Stray Cat]

Personally I'd be looking for way to explain that the coin didn't go through the glass, it was the glass that wrapped itself around the coin.

The moving things could be explained by perception of movement that's not really happening (eg: paralax) especially if you're talking about parallel universes.

 

[Garrette]

That's the kind of thinking I'm looking for but the different coins from different universes would be a tough sell. I'll more likely mumble something and improv on feedback.

Yeah, I wasn't really offering it as a solution but rather as an example of what you yourself need to come up with.

Improv is fine, but good improv is never totally improv. You need your parameters before you start; you can adjust based on feedback, but to keep it consistent and therefore "sellable," you need your baseline first.

I could see myself doing a time-warping thing around this, starting out with how we "know" time changes based on our mindset, for example how it slows down when we meditate.

What I'm doing here has nothing to do with the coin. It has everything to do with me allowing you to see how I am interacting with time, controlling your perception by filtering it through my own view. Assume you are meditating now, communing with the Goddess. You will notice something not usually there, a speck, perhaps, on the edge of your vision, a light in the center. Don't focus on that speck or on that light. Let it dance how it wants and slowly, slowly, you feel a change in the Goddess as if your connection is filtered. That is me. The Goddess is there, you are still in control, and what you choose is to look through my eyes. Do you see the coin here? Of course you do. It has no powers, no special abilities, and it does nothing impressive, but in the time I have said that you have forgotten what time has transpired so now the coin is there.

What I just wrote above is crap; I did it off the top of my head, but I think you can get the gist from it. Remember that it doesn't have to make sense; it merely has to be consistent and appear to make sense.

But the truth is I have some new stuff this summer to perform and I am looking forward to it. In Wiseman's book, 59 seconds, he says always have three things to look forward to doing. This is one for me.

Excellent. I hope it works well for you.

 

[Garrette]

Personally I'd be looking for way to explain that the coin didn't go through the glass, it was the glass that wrapped itself around the coin.

The moving things could be explained by perception of movement that's not really happening (eg: paralax) especially if you're talking about parallel universes.

That's good, too. I was composing my last as this was being posted, so I missed it.

 

[Senex]

I'm excited about performing this summer. My patter may be about having my own disbelief in magic and that gives me magic ability. I'm currently resurrecting an old "torn and restored" newspaper that only my oldest audience members could possibly remember.

Earlier in the thread we discussed magic to woo women by. I've been going through my OLD gear and found this chain escape. It's called chain escape by Royal Magic. According to the instructions you quickly escape from the chains, but when you chain an audience member with them they have trouble. I had this since I was eight but haven't seen them since 13 -- I abandoned this gear way too early I now believe. It was about $2.75 and 40 years later it is pristine condition except it's all chalky, but the key opens the lock still.

 

[marplots]

I'm excited about performing this summer. My patter may be about having my own disbelief in magic and that gives me magic ability. I'm currently resurrecting an old "torn and restored" newspaper that only my oldest audience members could possibly remember.

Earlier in the thread we discussed magic to woo women by. I've been going through my OLD gear and found this chain escape. It's called chain escape by Royal Magic. According to the instructions you quickly escape from the chains, but when you chain an audience member with them they have trouble. I had this since I was eight but haven't seen them since 13 -- I abandoned this gear way too early I now believe. It was about $2.75 and 40 years later it is pristine condition except it's all chalky, but the key opens the lock still.

Is it the one with two circular rings on a chain that looks like a dog choke collar, silver/chrome plated?

 

[Senex]

Is it the one with two circular rings on a chain that looks like a dog choke collar, silver/chrome plated?

That's the one. Bondage magic for children.