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I am in the process of reading pure effect by Derren Browm. I am new to mentalism and have only learned magic with cards and some coins. Early on DB talks about Mentalism being performed with magic and he feels it is ok. He then talks about how some people do not think they should be performed together.

My question is Why do some people say Mentalism is not magic, or part of magic? Am I missing something here?

Nic

Oh no.....

Tame the beast before he arrives!

In short:

Magic is seen by everyone as trickery,sleight of hand,deceit and quickness of the hand.Mentalism is seen as the illusion of mindreading.Performers of mentalism will give all kinds of excuse as to how they achieved their mentalism effect such as lie detection,NLP,body language, the lis goes on

When you mix the two,audiences see it all as a combination of tricks.

I personally don't see the harm in mixing the two

I think performers who tend to take mentalism too seriously tend to be a bit boring or dare I say pretentious(trying to conviince the audience that thy have special powers of some sort or trained ability to be able to pick of on so and so's signals etc)

At the end of the day your job is to entertain the audience with your tricks and performance so do what you must to achieve this.Be it combine mentalism with magic

Flood wrote:I think performers who tend to take mentalism too seriously tend to be a bit boring or dare I say pretentious(trying to conviince the audience that thy have special powers of some sort or trained ability to be able to pick of on so and so's signals etc)

At the end of the day your job is to entertain the audience with your tricks and performance so do what you must to achieve this.Be it combine mentalism with magic

You're leaving bait out...he will bite you know...

I have never typed so many responses only to delete them again. In the end there is nothing wrong with combining mentalism and magic. Mentalism is magic disguised.

Basically its an attitude thing and I've noticed a trend amoung 'mentalists' who think they are better? more pure? than magicians. Pure nonesense of course. Mentalists is also the current trend, although its history is long and interesting, right now it is the 'in' thing. Which is okay by me, just keep away from bizarre magic.

Now if you want to compare psychic's and magicians, well then you have two different worlds.

Mentalism is an attitude. If I am pretending to display powers which push the boundaries of credibility, then I won't mix it with obvious tricks. I might do something like a glass walk, but not a magic trick.

Some people think it is okay to mix magic and mentalism, but they are not mentalists. They are magicians doing mind-reading tricks, and that is something different.

One of the poorest things Derren does (one of his very few misses) is when he lights a cigarette and it turns into a card. It undermines everything else he does with it. He might as well hang up a big sign saying it's all a lie, and he is not using anything beyond magic trickery.

Interestingly, Kreskin combined magic with mindreading for years in his concerts as well as his television show from the 70's. Although he performs what any magician would call a trick, he prefers to call them effects because of the "mental effort involved."

When he does straight Mentalism he calls them experiments or test.

Kreskin, to this day, will still perform the Linking Finger Rings or the Production of a Glass of Water from a Bag. Given that these are clearly magic tricks (effects!) it appears that their inclusion in his performances have not weakened the impact he has had on the minds of his audiences.

bmat wrote: Basically its an attitude thing and I've noticed a trend amoung 'mentalists' who think they are better? more pure? than magicians. Pure nonesense of course.

Brian, you took the words right out of my mouth. Im glad you said it though and not me .

Mentalism IS magic. If it isnt then why is there a section for it on a magic forum ? It doesnt matter how fancy your patter or presentation, or what daft 'method' you try to convince people youre using, at the end of the day you are using magic methods, tricks, and therefore you are a magician.

jim

I agree with Brian and Jim. Mentalism is well-disguised magic.

That said, I probably wouldn't follow a mental epic by pouring milk into a cone of newspaper, but that's just me.

T.

Here, read this: http://www.online-visions.com/jonthomps ... alism.html (excuse the tortured English. I had little time to edit it down before copy deadline)

P.S: I predict someone will be along shortly to try to convince you otherwise purely from the verbosity of his answer.

Good essay, Jon (of course).

Ted wrote:Good essay, Jon (of course).

Ta muchly!

When called on, I always describe mentalism as "a branch of magic that focuses on the power of the mind."

I agree with the above point that "mixers" tend to be magicians rather than mentalists. I think that the superiority complex is largely a myth, though. Most of the mentalists I know are mentalists mainly because the rest of magic doesn't appeal; that might seem snooty to some, but it's just a matter of taste. And they all seem keen audience members for a bit of close-up. What's more, I don't know a single mentalist who won't show you a card transposition or a coin trick or two should the mood take them. That's not in performance, though, so doesn't count.

The fly in this ointment, of course, is that most of the big big mentalists have performed other forms of magic. Berglas did. Brown has his Smoke. Knepper seems to be regarded by the community as a mentalist, despite the fact that most of his act is wizardry. <bait>
It's akin to the dread subject of card-use in mentalism. Some might argue that the use of playing cards in mentalism undermines it completely, but like Buddha, who asks the grieving mother to find three grains of rice from a household that has not been touched by grief before he can resurrect her dead child, one would be hard-pressed to find a reknowned mainstream mentalist that has not messed around with paste-boards once in a while.</bait>

Indeed there seems to be a trend at the moment for people who enjoy card magic moving on to mentalism rather than coins and spongeballs. For some this is the more natural progression; for others not.

Agreed. When I first met up with Paul Brook he showed me a playing card colour change he'd invented. But he never performs with cards. Just goes to show

Just to clarify something that was said earlier; mentalists do not regard ourselves as being better than magicians. When I am doing mentalism I regard it as different from, not better than, magic. And I don't mix them.

If I was doing a magic show I would not break into song, because singing and magic are two different things. I have seen magicians break into song on at least three occasions, and the performances were cringe worthy.

I like to give a performance that has an internal coherent logic. Mixing magic and mentalism in one performance destroys that logic for me, both as a performer and a spectator.