Mentalism
Effects that look like mind reading, prediction, or influence. The methods are ordinary: psychology, arithmetic, memory, and a choice that was never as free as it looked.
Nothing here is presented as a power. That is not modesty, it is the interesting part. A performer who says out loud that no mind is being read, and then reads it anyway, has done something harder than one who asks to be believed.
Take one yourself
The Forer effect
In 1948 Bertram Forer gave 39 students what each believed was their own personality profile. Every one was identical. They rated it 4.26 out of 5.
You can take it here rather than read about it: rate how well the description fits you, and then see what everybody else scored.
Take the experiment →The phone number trick
Eight steps on a calculator hand back a phone number without a digit of it being said out loud. Multiply by 80, add 1, multiply by 250 — and the add 1 exists only to be canceled six steps later.
Put any number in and watch the algebra collapse a term at a time. It also answers the thing every other write-up gets wrong: the famous first three digits is not a rule, and ten and eleven digit numbers work unchanged.
Run the arithmetic →How do magicians read minds?
There are many. Arithmetic, a choice narrowed before it is made, an out with an answer ready whatever you do, a peek, work done before the show, and cold reading. No thought is read in any of them.
Four of them run on you here, one after another, and then the page says which of them landed.
Let it read you →The mental effects already here
Several of the card tricks on this site are mentalism wearing a deck. They are filed with the cards because that is where somebody looks for them, but the principle is the same one.
Think of a number
Somebody thinks of a number, takes that many cards, and remembers one you never see. You find it without ever learning the number, because the number cancels out of the arithmetic entirely.
Play it →Do As I Do
Two decks, two people, every action mirrored. You both pick a card and they turn out to be the same one. It reads as a connection between two minds and runs on a card you glimpsed once.
Play it →The 21 card trick
They think of a card and never name it. You ask only which pile it is in, three times, and then hand it to them.
Play it →Questions people ask
What is mentalism?
Performance in which the effects look like mind reading, prediction or influence. The methods are psychology, arithmetic, memory, forcing a choice, and noticing what people give away without meaning to.
Is mentalism real mind reading?
No, and every effect has a method. The Forer effect explains why a description written for everybody feels personal. A force explains why a free choice was not free. Arithmetic explains why a card lands where it was always going to land.
How do I learn mentalism?
Start with one principle rather than one trick. The procedures take minutes. The performance takes years, and it is mostly talking while your hands are busy.
Where is the line?
At what you tell the person. The same reading, performed as a demonstration, is a good evening. Performed as a genuine message from somebody's dead mother, it is something else, and the technique is identical either way.
More coming
This section has two pieces of its own so far, and it would be dishonest to pad the list. The card tricks are the fuller part of the site, and several of them are mentalism with a deck in the way.
Harrison Alley
Hobbyist · Writes Sleightless
A hobbyist, not a professional. I write up the self-working end of card magic, because it is the door I would point a beginner at, and every trainer here is played through and checked before it ships.