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Can we say then that mental magic is the crossover or perhaps a bridge between magic and mentalism? It feels roughly about right.

Tomo wrote:

Craig Browning wrote:Magicians love to do tricks, Mentalists don't do tricks... it's that simple.

What is it you do do, Craig, if you don't mind me asking?

Ask a magician to read your mind and nine out of ten times he's going to do a Center Tear and do it in such a poor way that you wont only recall jotting down the information, you'll recall seeing that blurb on Tv where they tipped how this works... but magicians don't care about that. Though they'll bitch about the "exposure" they won't apply themselves in learning how to overcome such issues.

On the other hand, when a Mentalist is asked to do the same he don't have to have you write it down and even if he does, you'll swear that you didn't do so. You see, we make you forget about the paper, the writing, etc. and guide you into an experience that is believable.

When it comes to the whole playing card thing I'm just going to start doing like my buddy Rick Maue is doing; rather than telling you know-it-alls "NO" I'm just going to encourage you... that way I and guys that think like me will have far more work while all you card clinging experts sit around all alone playing with your decks...

Personally, I prefer to learn from the poeple that actually work in the industry in the here and now vs. betting my entire career on a 30-50 year old point of view that may not be accurate to our current environment and social norms.

Yes, I know I tell people to go back and read over those older books and no, I'm not speaking out of either side of my butt. I've frequently explained that we need to evaluate and up-date some of the perspectives shared by the older contributors do to issues of social change. This leans more in how we treat genders and age groups as well as public beliefs and perceptions more than anything else.

Even 35 years ago, it was still considered sinful and wrong to have to rely on having Credit, for an example. People that had to have credit were actually looked down on by much of society... kind of prophetic when you look at how our world is going to hell in a handbasket today, don't you think?

AS to the allusion that I think things should be "my way or the highway" you couldn't be further off. My number one rule is one shared with us long ago by Chris Carey... DO THE STUFF THAT'S YOU! Do what fits the person you are, your natural character and what you identify with. This will free you from the trap of riding the wave of current trend and it will allow you to define who you are as a performer as well as a human being. So don't ever think I'm as cold and closed minded as to say I'm the only one with the right answer... I'm just not that arrogant (contrary to what Mr. Lewis may tell you...)

Even when I was doing the big illusions I had people telling me I should do more Mentalism... it took a while, but it did become a marriage of sorts and it is the kind of thing I have become defined as being... it's who and what I am and when a second, third or sixth year student of the craft that has less than a quarter the number of shows under their belt than I, wants to challenge me on a point, I have to ask them "aside from all the books examples you're basing this on, what real life foundation do you have for your supposition?"

Most have little to none.

Getting back to the "point" I don't look at what I do today in the same eyes as how I looked at it years ago when I was doing magic. Yes, it is THEATER which in itself is something unlike what most of you consider when you think of doing "a show" -- theater is far more complete and enveloping; the "tricks" seen as special effects or accent marks used for emphasising something... they aren't the "star" of the show, as we find in the world of magic.

If I'm working a stage setting I am creating only one single effect; they idea that what you see me do may just be real. If I fail at that job at any level, than I am not what I claim myself to be -- a Psychic Entertainer -- and I deserve the negative reaction of an audience that feels ripped off by some arrogant magician trying to bull s*** them with tricks... which brings us back to the lowly little Center Tear story I opened this up with.

I hate the damn thing... I hate it enough however, to work with it and finally find a logical time, place and manner by which to do it that not only made sense, but allowed me to create an actual miracle vs. a magician's stunt.

I know I've meandered a bit on this reply... sadly, I had it nearly done and somehow deleted it all and had to start over again... But, I hope I've been able to answer your questions effectively, nipped the hints of cynical challenging/baiting in the bud, and shined some light as to my meaning on things and why I hold to those opinions.

Tomo wrote:Can we say then that mental magic is the crossover or perhaps a bridge between magic and mentalism? It feels roughly about right.

Maybe. But I'm not sure that this can be fully applied. In which case you could turn any magic trick into 'mental magic' just by reframing the performance. You could take an Ambitious Card routine, and say it is a demonstration in making them see what you want them to see...'it looks like I put it in the middle, but actually I placed it on top. I just controlled your mind to make you think I put it in the middle...'
I don't think this moves what is clearly magic into the field of mental magic...

Ah, what I meant was mental magic as being mentalism with objects rather than purely in mind. That's as opposed to simply reframing a classic trick.

In light of Craig's latest post maybe we could consider mental magic in the following way....

If you have spent 5 years mastering nothing but card sleights and tricks, and suddenly find yourself performing 'mental feats', there is a very high chance it is mental magic and not mentalism.

A standard magician can perform mental magic, ie sleight of hand framed as mental, whereas it take a whole new discipline and study to be a mentalist? Correct me if I'm wrong!!

I don't accept this c*** (not the best) about mentalism and mental magic being two different things. Mentalism is bloody mentalism. It always has been since the days of Robert Houdin.

This artificial distinction has only come up in the last 15 years or so and was probably invented by some incompetent at the Psychic Entertainers Association. Before that everyone called it mentalism.

There is no need for the distinction. It is not a separate art at all. There are only different ways of presenting it. If you wish to present it as real mindreading fine. If you wish to present it as a magic trick fine. If you wish to present it as comedy fine. If you wish to present it as if you have dark forces at your disposal that is also fine. But you are presenting MENTALISM. Forget this silly distinction and just do the best job you are capable of.

I'm pretty naive in this matter, but it's very interesting.

On the issue of tricks vs miracles, I've always seen it that magicians perform tricks rather than miracles for both moral and practical reasons.

There seems to be a sort of unspoken agreement that magicians won't claim to have supernatural powers (except perhaps while performing and in character as part of the effect), and skeptics won't try to debunk/expose them. After all, there's nothing to debunk if its' a trick. Everyone's entertained, and no real harm is done.

From a moral point of view, there clearly can be some considerations if someone is claiming to have special powers that can't be explained, whether spiritual, mental or whatever. Uri Gellar has a large number of people believing he has bizarre powers - If he'd been born 500 years ago he might have been burned as a witch, or upheld as a god. Without getting into an terrible religious debate, some religions must have been started in a similar way, by someone claiming things, and people believing them.

Not that presenting things as miracles is always going to cause problems, but avoiding that does cut out a large and potentially dangerous area, and is probably the safer/easier route for most magicians, so it's often taken.

It doesn't seem fair to look down on magicians for performing "tricks" (unless they are badly done), as that seems to be a perfectly valid moral and practical standpoint.

If it is just a matter of entertainment then I'm not going to be particularly upset about someone claiming to have wierd powers, but I'm not going to believe them even if I don't know how it's done. It doesn't necessarily stop it being entertaining though, I can still be amazed and astounded at things I thought were impossible but which have been achieved with clever methods and psychology.

Does that make me a cynic rather than a skeptic? well possibly, if that means someone who's capable of understanding that they can be fooled, and that 99.9% of the time there is an existing explanation for things that happen, and the remainder usually leads to things being documented, studied, and then added to the body of knowledge that we generally call science.

Yes, science and skeptical/cynical tthought can lead to wrong conclusions, but the wonderful thing is that when it's shown to be wrong, it changes to accommodate new information. This is in stark contrast to belief or faith which often proves extremely resiliant to overwhelming evidence contradicting it.

If someone says they float a woman by magic/occult powers, and I know a way of doing the same thing using perfectly normal methods, Occam's Razor suggests the answer.

Where the debunkers and skeptics (call them cynics if you will, it can be a tiring way to live) get (rightly in my opinion) agitated is when it leaks out into real life, and people start really believing all sorts of wierd things about talking to their dead cats and stuff, and even worse, when they base important and dangerous decisions on this.

Craig Browning wrote:When it comes to the whole playing card thing I'm just going to start doing like my buddy Rick Maue is doing; rather than telling you know-it-alls "NO" I'm just going to encourage you... that way I and guys that think like me will have far more work while all you card clinging experts sit around all alone playing with your decks...

mark lewis wrote: Forget this silly distinction and just do the best job you are capable of.

Hear, Hear.

To be honest I am starting to become sick of the generalisations made by some as to the inability of all magicians to perform mentalism convincingly.

As Craig and others have said, perform what is you. Why does everything have to be put in a box with a label on it? If you want to claim psychics powers, then do so, if you want to claim psychological methods then do so, if you want to perform it all as a trick then do so.

All sides need to stop trying to put each other down, it can only harm the combined art in the end.

Ooh, here's an interesting idea...if you really COULD read minds, if it were something you had accepted and was almost quite a normal occurance to you, then what would stop you from wanting to dabble in magic?

I mean, think about it; mentalism and magic are, in performance anyway, two very different things, yet often quite closely allied. If you were a real mind-reader or whatever, then surely magic would be quite a lure to you...something that you could enjoy on the side to give you a bit of fun too as opposed to just entertaining others with something that is quite normal to you?

Hmm.

nickj wrote:As Craig and others have said, perform what is you. Why does everything have to be put in a box with a label on it?

I agree with this. It is the field of magic however that has created these two titles, not me, and as such it suggests a distinction. It doesn't matter to me in everyday life and my performances where that distinction lies, but I thought it would be interesting just to discuss how people perceived the two areas - especially self-proclaimed Mentalists...(and they appear to find conjuring in mentalism dispicable!).

It seems that the two are seen as interchangable by the majority, and I think this isn't necessarily a bad thing. As much as some will disagree, I think that provided you stay true to your character and your desire to create amazing magic, you can bring in conjuring methology to heighten the mentalism effect.

Provided it is done with some aesthitic skill, then why not bring some cards if they make the effect stronger? Obviously sponge balls or rope aren't good mentalism material, but if the cards, for example, are brought out and used in a way that helps to further and increase the effect, then maybe thats a good thing. If it knocks the spectator even harder, then it's difficult to argue against it....

Cardza wrote:Ooh, here's an interesting idea...if you really COULD read minds, if it were something you had accepted and was almost quite a normal occurance to you, then what would stop you from wanting to dabble in magic?

I mean, think about it; mentalism and magic are, in performance anyway, two very different things, yet often quite closely allied. If you were a real mind-reader or whatever, then surely magic would be quite a lure to you...something that you could enjoy on the side to give you a bit of fun too as opposed to just entertaining others with something that is quite normal to you?

Hmm.

Thanks Cardza, you've made an important point or two here.

One of the most important things you can ask yourself when it comes to "Mentalism" is WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF A REAL PSYCHIC DID THIS?

Were you aware of the fact that most of your old timers in mentalism came into it because of personal experiences and a belief in the paranormal?

When I teach new people about this stuff I don't want them associating with magicians and learning bad habits, I want them to be around psychics, new agers and all the freaks so they become "attuned" to the lingo, the attitude and the approach. This time of exposure also allows them to see the differences between the air headed & delusional and those crusty old salts that either do it "for real" (and there are a few that would give Randi a run for his money) or else (like Mr. Lewis) have been around long enough to know the game and how to run an "honest" scam... one that actually helps people feel better about life and take on some responsibility for it and their circumstances.

Sit down and watch John Edward as often as you can for at least a month or two and then listen to yourself as you try to think out a cold reading formula... look at the contrasts and how the theorised formula don't flow and don't readily fit vs. the more intuitive sense of flow John offers.

Ignore the debate as to if or not he's "real" and all the morality horse pucky people love to bring up around what he does... ask yourself is what you do is as "real" and even half as believable and applicable as what he's doing... after all, he's the one making the big money... it's NOT all the armchair experts out there criticising him and putting him down.

I've pointed this out before; if you study the threads on Edward prior to the Randi article in People you will find a plethora of magicians dumbfounded and amazed by his abilities adn yet, those same learned ass holes piped up the day after Randi "explained" it all, and claimed to have known that all along. Today, you can't find one person in magic that hasn't had their opinion "shifted' as the result of teh Randi rant. But why are you tearing down a guy that's obviously doing far better than you are, with a basic Q&A act?

What John Edward delivers is what the "truests" of Mentalism strive to be. We aren't juggling little slips of paper, or pulling out a deck of cards, we are PSYCHIC ENTERTAINERS and as such, we intentionally distant ourselves from what our magic cousins do.

Yes, we share techniques and to some level, methods but the psychological mind set of performance and delivery are completely different IF your goal is to be a valid Psychic Entertainer and not to be seen as a "fake"... as the old saying goes "No one wants to hire a fake psychic/mind reader"

Yes, we walk an amazinging thin adn taught tight-rope and we do deliberately allude to being "real" -- THAT'S MENTALISM! You will find it spoken of by Larsen, Boarde, Nelson and even Dunninger but that is not what is being promoted or supported in today's new wave of things.

If you go to Monday Night Magic in NYC with a "Psychic" act, you must (by contract) put out a disclaimer. That's why you will never see headliner acts like the Evansons every doing a return date there... they don't use them! This is a contrivance invented by certain members of teh magic community out of ignorance more than their supposed sense of "ethics" or "moral duty".

I'll not go down that path but I hope that some of you will at least consider what your goals are as a "Mentalist" and if it's not to take on the image and feel of being a genuine "Psychic" or "Mystic" simply accept that you are just a freakn' magician that plays with Illusions of teh Mind and don't use the term "Psychic Entertainer" in your press, nor the plethora of advantages (income bearing and otherwise) we Mentalists do use and have no shame in the fact that we do so.

Craig, you make some interesting points about the differences between mentalism and magic. You do seem to be somewhat irritated by magicians borrowing terminology, using similar methods, and thinking they are mentalists, when you understand it to be a different thing. That sounds fair enough.

It doesn't seem fair to lampoon magicians as "juggling little slips of paper" - many magicians (the majority?) do seem to care a lot about how they present magic, and are interested in affecting their audience, just perhaps in a different way to how you want to.

On the "morality" and skepticism issue, if you claim to be really psychic or whatever, AND believe you make considerably more money by presenting in this way, then don't be surprised that some people get a bit uptight about the fact that you are misleading others out of their money. However it's dressed up, and regardless of whether it's acceptable or not, that is effectively what you're doing.

Steverino wrote:Craig, you make some interesting points about the differences between mentalism and magic. You do seem to be somewhat irritated by magicians borrowing terminology, using similar methods, and thinking they are mentalists, when you understand it to be a different thing. That sounds fair enough.

It doesn't seem fair to lampoon magicians as "juggling little slips of paper" - many magicians (the majority?) do seem to care a lot about how they present magic, and are interested in affecting their audience, just perhaps in a different way to how you want to.

On the "morality" and skepticism issue, if you claim to be really psychic or whatever, AND believe you make considerably more money by presenting in this way, then don't be surprised that some people get a bit uptight about the fact that you are misleading others out of their money. However it's dressed up, and regardless of whether it's acceptable or not, that is effectively what you're doing.

Fristly, you misrepresent what I say... I'm not claiming to be "psychic" I allude to the idea that I may be real... big difference! This is what the old timers did up till roughly 10-15 years ago when the Randi Cult started expanding and poisoning so many young minds.

When I say that "magicians juggle little slips of paper" it is intended to sound just as nasty as it reads.

Why?

Ask a magicians to read your mind and he either has you pick a card to write something on a piece of paper he then tears up... STUPID!

He's doing a Magic Trick and that's exactly how it is percieved in the mind of the layman. I can use the very same techniques our magician friend employs and yet, the participant will never connect the idea that I ever touch the slip of paper or even a deck of cards in teh whole of the process... I'm not doing a "trick" I'm guiding them through an experiment that I want to be as above board in their hands as possible.

The psychological dynamics are what seperate magic from mentalism. AS I was just explaining to someone at another forum, we don't get "applause" in the way a magician is used to getting applause, it's more a series of gasps, sighs, frozen motion, shreaks, tears, etc.

How many times have you had your guests, after just three effects, beg you to stop as the result of their fear... their belief in what you were doing (even though they know it's all theatrical)?

I have them doing it just from a silling Ring off Chord routine and having the lights go out at just the right time (Rick Maue's DEMON RING).

Even Lee Earle will explain to you that solid mentalism REQUIRES an investment of belief in order for it to work effectively. This is something more and more newbies are not attempting to do simply because they want to do sponge bunnies as well as MoAB side by side vs. acquireing actual DISCIPLINE in their lives and mastering the form and style of performance that is calling to them most.

I get disgusted by today's young magicians because they all want to do it all and haven't any idea which end is up when it comes to the reality of any of it. God forbid you tell them the truth and encourage them to FOCUS and actually LEARN a skill... just one little thing that has nothing to do with David Lame, Criss the UnHoly or Dammit Brown.

The other side that gets me peeved, is when one of these novices (and anyone that's been actually performing fullt ime for less than 10 years, is a novice in my book) telling me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and proceed to barf up something Ian, Randi or whomever has said thinking it the new gospel to all life.

Fame has little to nothing to do with actually having done the work. You may not understand that statement at this stage in life, but you will in a fw short years if you stick around and learn to play the game that is show biz.

It's all a freak'n illusion guys and we're the suckers!

Hey Craig,

Sorry if you feel I misrepresented what you're saying, that was not my intention. I'm also sorry you seem to be so distressed.

I'm not sure if those points you were making were specifically directed to me, or just generally, but I'd like to point out that while I'm inexperienced, relatively young and a profoundly amateur novice, I wouldn't consider myself a fan of "David Lame, Criss the UnHoly or Dammit Brown". I am very interested in learning new skills, and very possibly some of the skills that you have learned, it just seems perhaps that I want to learn to use them in different ways.

Further to thus, while I've heard of Randi, and am vaguely aware of his stance on paranormal stuff, I have never read or seen any of his material and can fairly safely say that his work has had no effect whatsoever on my opinions in this area (I don't think he's widely known in this country outside of magician's groups?). My views were formed before I became interested in magic, and are based on my education as a scientist, along with what works for me as an understanding of how the world works. I don't know which Ian you are referring to, so I can't comment on his contribution to a new gospel to all life.

I think it's unlikely that as a novice in a field I would ever tell someone that they don't know what they are talking about, all I can do is to try to understand others, ask questions, and occasionally express opinions on what I see.