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So I recently purchased "13 steps to mentalism" and I don't think I need to tell you how helpful it was . The only thing I'm stuck on is what to study first. I've been thinking billet work, or the swami. Although Pencil, muscle and sound reading seem very interesting. I'd like to pick one thing and work on it for now though. What does everyone think would be most useful for a newbie?

Billets or swami, I think. You already do card magic, but maybe that chapter would give you some ideas of how to use what you already know.

The basic skills should always come first so I must say that I'm in totally agreement with Mr Part-Timer, the billets and the swami will be your staple tools so learn and master those first.

On a purely practical level, if you had to choose one technique out of billets or swami (which I agree are your best starting points), I would say go for the billets over the swami. Both achieve the same result from different directions (with billets you tell them what they were thinking, with swami you reveal that you knew what they were thinking after they've told you) but billets are that little bit more portable and impromtu. If someone asks you to do some mind reading, if you're not carrying your swami for some reason, you're are essentially powerless! However, it's almost always easy to get your hands on a pen and some paper and then you're pretty much set for billets.

There is also the benefit with billets that if you've spent enough time working out your routinue, you can engineer it so that all pens and papers have been disposed of and forgotten about by the time you do your big final reveal hopefully leaving the memory that you plucked a thought directly from their mind, whereas with your swami there will be a written record at the end- which certainly isnt the end of the world but you may feel is an advantage when it comes to presentation.

Regardless of which method you choose to study first, the great thing about either is that once you've got the basic techniques down, your only limit on effects is your imagination.

Like Tarbell there is NO first learn from Corinda.
It all depends on what you want to learn about Mentalism. What you want to do with Mental Magic or Mentalism

So Just start at Step 1. Read through--fairly quickly--study & research comes later
Then onto Step 2 and so on till you have scanned through all 13 Steps.

On your journey you will see illustrations that will intrigue and these may help you decide WHICH Step to really study first.

In my case it was either Book Tests or 2 Person Telepathy I wanted to know about first.
But I ended up with the Prediction section first.

Allen Tipton

Amazing-magic wrote:So I recently purchased "13 steps to mentalism" and I don't think I need to tell you how helpful it was . The only thing I'm stuck on is what to study first. I've been thinking billet work, or the swami. Although Pencil, muscle and sound reading seem very interesting. I'd like to pick one thing and work on it for now though. What does everyone think would be most useful for a newbie?

Have a good read through the whole book and keep coming back to the chapters you like the best. Eventually, you'll set down on an effect you really want to get into and the rest should just follow.

Thats what I'm doing at the moment. Just reading the entire thing to get a good feel for the subject. Once I've read it once I'll begin the proper studying. From the 4 steps I've covered so far though I'm thinking Predictions will be my first subject.

I would start with billets, then master the swami. Then move on to readings (but not with 13 Steps - there are better guides to reading). Then I would sit back and become a master of those. Leave out the rest.

I have to agree with the billet suggestions. The techniques are incredibly versatile, in that you can perform a wide range of 'mind-reading' effects far beyond that which you may consider to be billet-related right now. I've never got on with nail writing, as it happens.