talkmagic.co.uk

I love the idea of a forum, it'd be useful to be able to bat some ideas around with people.

Oh and good to see you back Abraxus

howdy lomster..nice to see you, to see you nice...hope the knitting is going well...

thats where you went wasnt it? a knitting course?

aaah...sexism at 9.40am all is right at TM again...

knitting???? what do you think I am, that's so last year. Ironing is the new knitting this season.

TheAge wrote:Btw, when did the book go on sale? How long would it generally take for a book to stop selling like 'hot cakes'?

It went on sale 6/6/7. I dunno how long it takes for books to stop selling like hot cakes, or what hot cakes sell like for that matter, but people keep buying it. Lulu costs nothing to list books and because it's a print-on-demand site there's no stock to carry, so it'll be on sale for a long time.

abraxus wrote:I've just started work on the "Great and Secret Show" effect I mentioned to you Tomo...

that's the beauty of how Naked Mentalism was put together, the handy charts at the end of the book for reference when you start creating your own effects...very, very useful...

Ooo, smashing! This is going to be a really good one!

Lady of Mystery wrote:knitting???? what do you think I am, that's so last year. Ironing is the new knitting this season.

I like ironing. It's so therapeutic.

Any road up, I've been thinking about the entry level to Naked Mentalism, especially about the Naked Book Test. Does anyone think there'd be enough support for a fully scripted, standalone, (and above all, affordable!) Naked Book Test? A complete "soup to nuts" mechanism to learn and use straight off the page, with all the outs and options built in?

It'd still be a learning curve, but it'd be more accessible.

Great Idea Tomo. If we all remember my main complaint over the book. Actually I am going on hoilday soon so I shall be giving naked mentalism another indepth study.


Shape, Colour forces work a treat by the way. But you all ready knew that.

Add my vote for a dedicated forum.

I found the book fascinating. As for its effectiveness, well for me it was all about the book test, I'm not too interested in forcing 'carrot' or 'square' on people.

I'm 'only' hitting at 50% on the book test so far, and I have had one 'language savvy' person see straight through it. I still think it is fabulous, and am playing with some different scripting as I don't really like the 'mental image' patter suggested.

Has anyone else had people see through the 'Naked Book Test' method, by the way?

The coin prediction is also pretty good, 75% hit-rate during my trip home. Disappointing that I'm exiled in the USA and a little research has proven that it can't be done over here.

Right-o. There's a distinct possibility of a forum on the way, not a million miles away from these hallowed servers.

In the meantime, misterblack, if you want to drop me a PM about your handling I'm more than willing to give you some tips.

I got mine a couple of days ago. Obviously, I haven't had a chance to try any of it out or seriously study it, so this is more my initial thoughts rather than a full review. It's definitely a good book, but I'm a little under whelmed - thanks mostly to some of the hysterical reviews I've read in various places I'd imagine. No doubt I'll be told it's because I'm a noob who doesn't 'get' it, and that it's too advanced for me, but I don't think any of the points I'm going to bring up have anything to do with that.

Part one: Priming

This is the best part of the book. I bought Michael Murray's 'Between the Lines' and liked it a lot, and was looking to Naked Mentalism to help me improve my hit rate with that, and to help me come up with my own ideas along those lines. The book definitely delivers in this area, there's a ton of good, useable information for anyone interested in psychological mentalism. As has been stated a number of times, you WILL have to take this information and make it work for you - if you're in two minds about this book, I'd suggest checking out 'Between the Lines' as a taster. If you like it, Naked Mentalism can take you further down that road.

Part two: The Naked Book Test

Possibly the biggest selling point, but also the biggest disappointment for me. Now it is totally clean, and when it hits it'll no doubt be very powerful, but the idea that you can have someone go into a library, choose a book, choose any word, then know what that word is, is slightly misleading. For best results you're going to have to limit the type of word, limit the number of letters, then ask for the first letter...and there's still a fair chance you won't get it right.

This got me thinking about something that Derren Brown (I think) said in one of his books, about when a spectator is remembering an effect, they build it up into their mind to be something bigger and better than it actually was. The big thing about the Naked Book Test is that it's totally gimmick free, but is that really only impressive to other mentalists/magicians? Would a spectator be more impressed by a guy who knows that they're thinking of the word 'That' or 'Been' or something a bit close to it, or would they be more impressed with the guy who can tell them the whole line or paragraph they they're thinking of, using a slightly less clean book test? Are they going to remember that you had them slip an index card into a book, or are they going to remember that you knew what they were thinking? There's even a method talked about in the first section where Becky Harris used an impromptu number force to tell a person the line they were thinking of, which to me is more impressive than the naked book test.

Of course, you can do the Naked Test down the phone, and it'd be worth learning just for that.

Part three: Naked Coin Prediction

This part is okay, but if you know about the Derren Brown 1992 prediction, then this is the logical next step. It's exactly what I imagined it to be - only I wasn't smart enough to seek out the information for myself! I think there's too much risk of failure with this one to use it as any more than a pub trick, or something to impress friends. With earlier parts of the book, you can change misses into hits, or near hits. If you don't get this right within a couple of guesses it's going to be pretty obvious what you're doing.

Part four: Miscellany

A few bits an pieces, a couple okay, and a couple that I personally wouldn't have included in the book.

So, not the most positive review. You're probably getting the pitchforks and flaming torches out by now...BUT, I did try out a few things with my dad while reading the book and got three direct hits (a word and two coins). I'm hovering around 7 out of 10 at the moment, but would expect it to rise the more I study it. It is good, and I don't regret buying it, however, a lot of the reviews I've seen have been WAY over the top (THIS BOOK SHOULD BE SOLD FOR £1000'S!!!! etc) and you need to keep this in mind before buying it.

each to their own!

i would say the opposite though...Between the lines is a good concept, but then you're paying fifteen quid for the one effect...with Naked Mentalism, you're paying 30 quid, for unlimited effects...

I'm working on a "big one" (matron) at the moment...but a simple one that i now carry around with me is dressed as a re-occuring dream, with me as a hitman, i describe the journey, the place, the hit, and payment...all kindsa stuff...then it gets more and more hazy as i track the "hit"...the last thing i remember in the dream is passing a cinema and the poster they have outside...

it shows every single "thing" that i'd been trying to project to the audience from the start...even the name of the film the poster is advertising...i even have inside a sealed envelope a small hand drawn poster on display from the start...

works very well for me, and i even have an out ready too for some of it...

i can play it as influence, thought projection...all kinds of ways...love it...

i do the naked book test by text message personally, as an example of remote viewing...

nameless wrote:So, not the most positive review. You're probably getting the pitchforks and flaming torches out by now...BUT, I did try out a few things with my dad while reading the book and got three direct hits (a word and two coins). I'm hovering around 7 out of 10 at the moment, but would expect it to rise the more I study it. It is good, and I don't regret buying it, however, a lot of the reviews I've seen have been WAY over the top (THIS BOOK SHOULD BE SOLD FOR £1000'S!!!! etc) and you need to keep this in mind before buying it.

No pitchforks for a good, honest review. It does frighten me when people say it's worth £1000's, though!

What you have to keep in mind is that the Naked Philosophy isn't to produce 100% certainty like a trick but to reproduce the imperfect powers of a "real" psychic - only much more accurately. Better results will come through more experience, but 75% is already 25% better than the baseline results you'd expect from testing the real thing. With the NBT, for instance, it's important to remember to explain that it's an ability you're trying to learn rather than presenting it as something guaranteed. As you say, however, it'll get better with experience and mastering the force for the NBT and the NCP will go a long way to increasing the hit rate. That's something I've found people sometimes skimping on slightly, and when they realise it, their results go through the roof.

Any road up, over the weekend I started work on a fully scripted version of the NBT - the whole "soup to nuts" (I love that phrase!) deal from setting the scene to final epilogue, including all the outs and options at every stage. The problem I have now is putting it down on paper in such a way that it's a) readable and b) not too much to learn.

Later on, I'll be looking for Naked Mentalism owners to test it, but it may be a few weeks yet; there's a lot of effort to bring to bear on it first.

abraxus wrote:but a simple one that I now carry around with me is dressed as a re-occuring dream, with me as a hitman

That's 'dressed as a re-occurring dream' to disguise the fact that you are, actually, a hit man, of course.

Sexton Blake wrote:

abraxus wrote:but a simple one that I now carry around with me is dressed as a re-occuring dream, with me as a hitman

That's 'dressed as a re-occurring dream' to disguise the fact that you are, actually, a hit man, of course.

i kill people with irony...and subdue them with sarcasm...

abraxus wrote:I kill people with irony...and subdue them with sarcasm...

Very funny.