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I am very interested in the area of suggestion in magic mainly because of Luke Jermay. I looked into Skullduggery by Luke Jermay which I hear most (at least in part) of the effect are mainly based on suggestion but I don't know if it goes into enough detail about suggestion so I can apply it to my own effect it different ways. So my question is:

What would be the best resources to learn about suggestion and how to apply it to a magic or mentalism context?

get jermay's building blocks book...some of skullduggery is taken from that...but building blocks is good...lets you learn within an effects driven way, so if the suggestion fails - you still have a positive outcome...

Generally, read anything you can about psychology. Any books about advertising, salesmanship, consumer psychology, and the whole field of management and public speaking, are all places where you can find useful knowledge. Your library should have plenty of this kind of book.

Kenton Knepper's Wonder Words CD series is awfully expensive, but covers everything you might want to know about doing sneaky things with words. There's years of study in there, and it applies equally to magic and mentalism. Luke Jermay started out as a student of Kenton.

His books Kentonism, Twists and Trances, and Q cover some of the same ground. The first two are about effects that look like hypnosis without involving real hypnosis. Q is about cueing your helpers.

I would imagine Banachek's Psychological Sublties series would be good to learn suggestion from, but I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for. :p

Robbie wrote:Generally, read anything you can about psychology. Any books about advertising, salesmanship, consumer psychology, and the whole field of management and public speaking, are all places where you can find useful knowledge. Your library should have plenty of this kind of book.

I recommend Robert Cialdini's book, Influence - The Psychology Of Persuasion, to cover some good stuff here. It's an interesting read and very useful for getting your own way with things

I second the suggestions for Building Blocks and PS, but it seems BB is out of print and is costing as much as PS did when it was out of print...

[edit] If you already have Skulduggery, Building Blocks doesn't really have much more in terms of raw ideas on suggestion. Rather, in BB, the structure and scripts to use are better laid out and explained. I think a careful viewing or two of Skulduggery should be as adequate as having the book since he says much of what is in the first portion of the book. The second portion has routines, but really, the stuff in 7 Deceptions seems better IMO.

I would quite like to get Building blocks however I can't find it anywhere. It is out of print and I still can't find it on ebay or other places. Also living in the UK never helps when trying to find out of print books.

I had heard a bit about Knepper I was looking into his book 'Miracles of Suggestion' However I though Skullduggery would teach better stuff. I however will defiantly look more into Knepper he's got a lot of material out there.

'Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion' I've heard that book being recommended but whenever I look at it, all it seems to have is how advertising can influence you but I want to know about suggestion and how I can influence people. However it's only £5 on amazon so why not

I'd suggest the OP does a little research on LJ before sending him any money directly for any of his products.

Unless they like chasing white rabbits.

As has been said, amongst mentalists, Jermay and Knepper's names are synonymous with suggestion. Jermay was inspired by Knepper and to my knowledge Knepper was inspired largley by Bandler and Grinder, if you look at the linguistics side of things, who in turn were largley inspired by the 1957 'Syntactic Structures' by Noam Chomsky and also by Gregory Bateson, and Whitehead and Russell's awesome Principia Mathematica (concerned with logic and axoims which clearly relates to linguistics) and by the General work of a few massivley influential psychologist such as Virginia Satir, Fritz Perl but most relevantly here Milton Erickson.

Depending on how in depth you'd like to go, I'd definatley reccomend reading the early NLP texts which, with regard to suggestion, would be 'The patterns of the Hypnotic Tecnhiques of Milton Erickson' vol. 1&2. which apparently Bandler and Grinder no longer use, but is nonetheless incredibly fascinating. The first one has a whole chapter about one of my favourite authors, Aldous Huxley on human conciousness which is an added bonus. 'Trance-formations' is another great book by them about hypnosis, which is in the form of a course they gave but it has some great stuff in there. On top of that, if you can get hold of anything by Milton Erickson himself, it won't be easy, but he was certainly the Einstein of suggestion and a fascinating person who has attributed to his name some incredible feats of suggestion.

If you want a more general overview of techniques for using suggestion, such as making someone feel something get warmer for example, then Building Blocks by Luke Jermay, which has already been mentioned is something worth trying to track down. If you prefer this more mentalism and magic orientated suggestion then several works by Knepper which have already been mentioned are apparently very good, although I do not own much of his stuff.

As Robbie mentioned, if you look at more general uses of control, then that can be quite interesting too. For example, if you follow up on the Chomsky background, you'll eventually end up finding out about media control and advertisements and all gets terribly political although what this has to do with mentalism, I'm not quite sure. Personally, as someone who went through a phase of loving those sorts of books, I wouldn't reccomend the 'sales' sorts of books, management, public speaking, 'persuasion' or those general sort of books.

Yep, Miracles of Suggestion. I knew there was a third one to go along with Kentonism and Twists and Trances, but I was too lazy to go and look.

And from Luke Jermay, Seven Deceptions. This is the only book by Jermay that I've read. It's extremely good. Not sure if it's still in print.

Do you really want to use suggestion or are you more looking at putting over the illusion that you're using suggestion? There are many magicians out there who will make out that they're using suggestion when really they're doing nothing of the sort.

Yeah I've heard a little about people not receiving things they've ordered from Luke Jermay, what is up with that? I brought coral fang a little while ago and I received it.

Thank you very much SamGurney I looked into those books and the one that most caught my eye was trance formations the cover reminds me of frogs into princes. That's what I wanted a background of suggestion so I know how it works. I will also get Skullduggery because It has some really good applications of suggestion.

I've been trying to track down Building blocks and Seven deceptions but they both appear to be out of print, helpful.

Also thank you Robbie. When my bank balance goes up I will buy some of Kneppers stuff he really has a lot of things on suggestion. I'm impressed.

I want to do both, actually use suggestion and appear like I'm using it when not, just to make me look horribly clever.

Also because suggestion doesn't always work does anyone know what to do when it fails? I know you can just admit that things don't always work and carry on with life but I only really know card tricks for close up. It doesn't really work in my mind to try and stop someone's pulse and if that fails do a card trick. Does anyone know any good sure fire close up mentalism?

Thank you all for your help.

DESmond TINY wrote:Yeah I've heard a little about people not receiving things they've ordered from Luke Jermay, what is up with that? I brought coral fang a little while ago and I received it.

Thank you very much SamGurney I looked into those books and the one that most caught my eye was trance formations the cover reminds me of frogs into princes. That's what I wanted a background of suggestion so I know how it works. I will also get Skullduggery because It has some really good applications of suggestion.

I've been trying to track down Building blocks and Seven deceptions but they both appear to be out of print, helpful.

Also thank you Robbie. When my bank balance goes up I will buy some of Kneppers stuff he really has a lot of things on suggestion. I'm impressed.

I want to do both, actually use suggestion and appear like I'm using it when not, just to make me look horribly clever.

Also because suggestion doesn't always work does anyone know what to do when it fails? I know you can just admit that things don't always work and carry on with life but I only really know card tricks for close up. It doesn't really work in my mind to try and stop someone's pulse and if that fails do a card trick. Does anyone know any good sure fire close up mentalism?

Thank you all for your help.

Well for the effect you are talking about (For Andruzzi) there is a mechanical back-up for the first stage of the effect but one of the most important things is to have a positive attitude.
Personally, I find that too much confidence results in complacency in your technique (what you are saying, how you are saying it e.t.c.) and too little confidence does exactley the same thing. With suggestion you can have 'outs', but whilst you are performing I don't find it at all helpful to be thinking 'Well if it fails, then I have an out'. Instead, focus on what you are doing and expect it to work. Linguistically, 'expect' is the perfect choice there: it neither presupposes absolute certainty- which results in complacency- or a hopeless attitude which will get you nowhere.

This advice is easy to say, the easiest thing to agree with but the most difficult to learn in practice; the simple advice is always the best.

There are a few effects which rely totally on suggestion- such as the second phase of 'For Andruzzi'. The secret is an attitude of expectation. This is what makes it work. If you think: 'there is no out, if this fails I will look stupid, I don't want to look stupid ergo I don't want to fail' then you will much more likley fail. The best thing you can try is be pragmatic; where possible, don't rely on suggestion to be the be-all and end all and have outs where possible, but do not let the lack of certainty prevent you from using it. Then when you can't have an out, just learn to ride the wave of the awesome power suggestion has. Sometimes you will fail. But such is the price for such power.

One of my favourite effects is actually from the Seven Deceptions (although in a hybrid and very different form), called RGM. The principle is that you show someone a card and they forget it. It's quite simple and incredibly powerful.As an out the card is exchanged because in the unlikley event that the effect completley fails, then it becomes 'I made you think you saw the 6 of clubs, which I happen to have right here in my pocket'.

which is all based on, i believe, ed marlo's work...mechanically speaking...

no offense to anyone who has posted sane advice - but i still say (in my opinion only) that building blocks is the way ahead if you can get a copy...just cos its nice and clearly laid out and you don't have to work through creatively phrased bullsh1t to get to the useful bits...

edit - and milton is a bit too advanced for anyone just wishing to test out/dabble in it, innit

IAIN wrote:which is all based on, i believe, ed marlo's work...mechanically speaking...

no offense to anyone who has posted sane advice - but i still say (in my opinion only) that building blocks is the way ahead if you can get a copy...just cos its nice and clearly laid out and you don't have to work through creatively phrased bullsh1t to get to the useful bits...

edit - and milton is a bit too advanced for anyone just wishing to test out/dabble in it, innit

Perhaps surprisingly, I agree. Sort of..