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.
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.
Everywhere else explains this. Here you can take it: read the description, rate how well it fits you, and then see what everybody else scored.
Take the experiment →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.
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 →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 →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 →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.
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.
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.
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.
This section has one piece 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.