talkmagic.co.uk

Read this very interesting post from Mark Lewis on the Cafe.I'm sure he won't mind me copying and pasting,in fact I'd say it will be an ego booster:

Let me expand on the matter. First let me deal with a magician who is known as a magician rather than as a mentalist. Can he include mentalism. Of course he can! It is just another demonstration of the impossible so I see no problem with it.

It becomes more of an issue if you want to be known as a mentalist alone. I personally have been moving away from mentalism to a degree because it fits better with my other activities as a close up magician and children's entertainer. And since, as I mentioned, on another thread I got on a bit of a Potassy kick a few years ago I prefer the magic. And another unique reason is that I do many psychic readings in a genuine manner and I feel uncomfortable doing the same thing by trickery on a stage. At a psychic fair I emphasise to everyone that I am a magician and keep away from mentalism altogether. It may seem counter intuitive but think about it. If you see a psychic do sponge balls and coins through the table you won't find it odd that he does readings also. Instead you are fascinated by what seems to be an interesting character. However, the minute you do mentalism at a psychic fair you are actually in danger of losing customers because they suspect you are using trickery and they won't like it. And the other psychics won't like it either. That is because what you are doing is fraudulent and fraud is not appreciated by genuine psychics however you define the word "genuine"

But doing a mental act is different. Here is my philosophy of a few years ago. I haven't looked at it for quite a while and for all I know I might not agree with it any more. Still, here it is for what it is worth. I will be pleased to read it myself and see if my views have changed. At any rate it will give you all something to think about.
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Here is my take on this mentalism and magic debate which has gone on for decades.
This subject has been discussed a million times. It has been done to death,
in fact.
Yet has it?
I think I have a new perspective on the matter. Actually it is not a new
perspective from my point of view. I figured this out years and years ago.

When I first started performing decades ago I used to believe the standard
wisdom that you should never mix the two. It took about 25 years for me to
realise reluctantly that the standard wisdom was WRONG.

It became obvious to me that I had followed the wrong philosophy for a
quarter of a century. Not only is it perfectly acceptable to mix the two I
have discovered that it is ADVISABLE. Nowadays I do not merely say vaguely
that you can perhaps mix the two. I say that you SHOULD mix the two. I was
almost tempted to say that you MUST mix the two but I will resist it because
there are always exceptions.

I first got suspicious of the rule because there seemed to be too many
exceptions to it. A few exceptions here and there I can accept but when I
noticed that 80% of the really big names in mentalism mixed the two I
thought that there had to be something else going on.

Dunninger mixed the two. Kreskin still does.
Berglas mixes the two and in fact always used to finish his mental act with
pickpocketing!
Al Koran bragged and bragged to me that his Linking Rings was a show
stopper. His actual words " I open my mental act with the rings and it is a
show stopper. Yes. A mental act!!!"
He seemed to be very proud that he did the rings in a mental act and
emphasised the seeming incongruity of such. He seemed quite delighted by it.

With great trepidation I introduced magic into my mentalism show expecting
to be struck down by lightning and great disapproval of the multitude.
Instead I was astonished to find that not only did I get stronger reaction
from the audience I found that the belief in my clairvoyant powers was
ENHANCED!

I have found that to be the case ever since. Whenever I have performed
mentalism alone it has gone over well but less people believed that I was
real. Paradoxically when I performed magic I noticed it seemed in some weird
way to make the mindreading more genuine.

This was not only against standard wisdom it seemed at first to defy logic.
Could all the books I had read be wrong? I was sick as a pig to realise that
they were. I had wasted 25 years following the wrong belief system.
For the last 15 years I have been trying to make up for lost time and I
would suggest to newcomers that they don't waste all the time I did. You
have to be very careful when reading the advice in books it seems and you
must not be afraid to break the mold once in a while.

I analysed the matter and decided to figure out what was going on. After all
it seemed logical that if you mixed magic with mentalism that people would
think that the mentalism was just a trick like the magic they had seen.

Wrong. And I believe I have figured out why. I often suspect that people who
mix magic and mentalism with good results do it out of instinct based on
audience reaction yet feel a vague sense of guilt that they are not doing it
the "proper" way. They may think that somehow they are an odd exception and
this is why it is working. It might be helpful to these people to realise
why it is working and why what they are doing is producing seemingly
illogical results but successful nevertheless.

I believe that it is all to do with the subconcious resentment people have
against being fooled. Every magician has come up against this. This is why
hecklers appear and why certain people show as little reaction as they can
to magic. There are ways to overcome this problem but it is beyond the scope
of what I have to say here.

A mentalist is subject to another difficulty besides the resentment one. He
has a scepticism factor to deal with. He has double trouble. Scepticism and
resentment.

If you do mentalism alone you get this in spades. I well remember a fine
mentalist performing at a certain venue. I remember that he only did
mentalism with no magic of any kind. I also remember the comments
afterwards.

"No such thing as mindreading" and "is he trying to insult our
intelligence?" and "who is he kidding" and "he is pretty good but it is just
a trick"

Contrary to what some self deluded mentalists think laymen can be a bit more
astute than they are given credit for. Sure there are a few laymen who will
believe it is real but the vast majority do not. Some people do have a bit
of common sense.

The natural scepticism and defensive resentment factor worked against this
fellow even though he was a fine performer.

Now perhaps you can see where I am going with this. If you start with some
magic a strange thing happens. A kind of reverse psychology. It is like you
have made a disclaimer without having to say it out loud. You are implying
that you are not real. That what you do is trickery and entertainment.
However, subconsiously the audience relaxes. When you do the mindreading it
seems that you are not claiming anything at all. The scepticism and
resentment factor has been removed.
Paradoxically this brings out the belief in weird things that lurks in all
of us. All the more so because you have not claimed anything. You have let
the audience believe the idea was theirs alone.

Dale Carnegie once said "let the other fellow believe the idea is his"
By doing magic first (I recommend starting with it and keeping it separate
from the mentalism-do not mix and match) a strange thing happens in the
spectators mind. They form the idea that what you do is real OF THEIR OWN
ACCORD. It is not pushed down their throat in the same way it is if you do
the mentalism alone.

As I have said many mentalists have instinctively known that they can mix
the two but may have wondered why. I believe the above reasoning is why.

Think about it.

Having watched Max Mavens DVD Multiplicity around six times now its pretty obvious to him that the two can be mixed and indeed many of his items on the DVD are really magic tricks as he freely admits. Anyone interested in mixing ,magic and mentalism should buy this... worth every penny IMO and a few of the gold plated tips would never occur to the average Magi when presenting equivique on just two items for example

i think that as long as the cups and balls dont get wheeled out and one uses common sense and with the right crowd , why not.

My own take on this is here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/m ... f/center/1

I call it the performance possibility frontier....

Read it, you might like it

Cheers

D Todd

Thanks Doc , i shall order a copy next week.

Also on your site i think a reply is needed to Stephen Hawkings recent statement that " Philosophy is dead". Dear me...

Antera wrote:Thanks Doc , i shall order a copy next week.

Also on your site i think a reply is needed to Stephen Hawkings recent statement that " Philosophy is dead". Dear me...

Thank you!

Philosophy will never be dead, since the claim itself is subject to philosophical analysis...it presupposes we know what death is and it presupposes that all of philosophy is known and therefore dead, both of which are subject to critical analysis...

One of my favourite quotes from a student:

'There is no such thing as a true statement!'

Best wishes

Dr T

What a great post this has turned out to be, very interesting and informative. I have recently been practicing more mntalism and decided to start a new walk about routine. In the routine I wanted to incorporate both styles and I believe they can go together well. After a couple of run throughs The response has been great to the magic and mentalism and the routine overall.

What I believe is the important factor when putting a mentalism/magical routine together is relevence and congruence. But that is my view with any routine. A routine should flow and naturally progress from beginning to end. Personally I find nothing worse than a selection of effects thrown together with no theme or relevence. I see a routine as not just a group of effects but one routine which takes specs/audience on a journey on which they move from experience to another as well aa the over all experience the have. qhich thwy tak away with them .

I f this is achieved then mentalism and magic can be performed aa long as they fit together, fit you theme and your character.

Nic

I have posted versions of the following on a couple of mentalism forums, and it seems particularly relevant to this thread so please humour me as I report it here. This anecdote combines magic and mentalism in a slightly different way...

I have just returned from San Francisco and LA, where I had been for just less than a week. During that time I managed to squeeze in a number of performances, culminating in performing a routine at The Magic Castle in LA.

Everything I used fitted into my pockets. I took:

One SAW (as always. I don't even consider this a 'prop' because it's my real wallet)

One deck of MK-MOD ESP cards, used for ESPsycrets.

The original 'classic' version of The Third Man.

One deck of playing cards (not used during this 'tour', in fact).

One home-made Tommy Pad.

Some business cards.

A Space pen (as always. It tends to be quite good at helping with misdirection too, I've found. It draws their interest and you can make jokes about writing underwater etc...)

This was much more than I needed, in fact. I used ESPsycrets and the SAW almost exclusively. The Third Man popped out briefly, but that was just because I was getting bored of the other effects I could have spent all night running through ESPsycrets, to be honest.

The most interesting part for me was the Magic Castle part. I used only my SAW, business cards and pen. After everyone had oohed and ahhed at the bill changes etc that they'd seen the magicians perform, the drawing duplication that I did affected them so differently (no, they did not laugh, punch me to the ground and urinate all over my back)...

There was silence. Then murmurs of 'wow' and finally lots of discussion, none of which related to magic methods, but about how I might have read someone's thoughts. There was no applause, which seemed entirely right for the moment.

I knew none of these people (all of whom were American, I think). They were slightly confused, because they decided that I was not a magician but we were at a magician's club. It was an excellent result. I felt like such a fraud

I have most of David Regals offerings and i think he is one guy whom we could say crosses between Mag. and Ment. and who appears at the Castle frequently now its been mentioned

maybe hes a bit cheesy for UK crowds but i think he fits the bill perfectly as someone who pulls the mix off perfectly in his homeland anyway.

I think that mentalism is the wrong word and mental magic should be the word used here. there is a difference isnt there without elaborating

Just a quick note here

I got three of Barry Richardsons DVDs on Mentalism and Magic , yes he does mix the two ( to my surprise)

The stand up magic DVD of his i have no interest in and the first person who requests this here can have it for free..just PM me and ill post it when i get back to my office. Otherwise its cobwebs all the way

he should stick to mind reading i think