GuideIs mentalism real?

What mentalism is

It’s a performing art. Specifically it’s a branch of magic where the effects look mental, like reading thoughts, predicting choices and knowing things I’ve got no way of knowing. People have been doing it on stages and in drawing rooms since at least the 1800s.

I’m an entertainer. My job is to give you the experience of having your mind read, and to make it convincing, in roughly the way an actor’s job is to give you the experience of watching somebody fall in love.

How it works, in very general terms

I won’t walk you through methods, for the same reason a novelist won’t tell you the ending on page one. I can tell you what it draws on, though.

Some of it is psychology. People are a lot more predictable than they think, and if you give most people a “free” choice they’ll pick from a very small set of options. Some of it is observation, because faces and hands and hesitations give away more than words do. Some of it is language, since the way I word a question changes how you answer it. A good deal of it is plain magic technique, a hundred and fifty years of it, pointed at information where a magician would point it at objects. The rest is showmanship, which mostly means knowing what to leave out.

A strong piece uses several of these at once. That’s a big part of why it’s so hard to work backwards from what you saw.

Mentalists, psychics and mediums

The line that matters is what’s being claimed. A psychic or a medium says the ability is genuine and paranormal, and often charges for advice based on it. A mentalist doesn’t claim that. Some of the most famous mentalists in history spent a big part of their careers exposing people who do.

I’ll happily let you wonder. But I won’t ever tell you I’m talking to your grandmother.

So why does it feel so real?

Because part of it is. When I tell you the name you’re thinking of, you really were thinking of it, you really hadn’t said it out loud, and I really do know it. The only impossible part is the route the information took to get to me. Your brain can’t find that route, so it does what brains do and grabs the nearest explanation, which is that I read your mind.

That little jolt, where for a second the world doesn’t quite add up, is what people are paying for. Good magic has always sold the same feeling. Mentalism just happens to aim it at grown-ups.

Is it okay for a corporate or faith-based group?

Yes. There’s nothing occult in it. I don’t call on spirits, I don’t tell fortunes, and I don’t claim any powers. It’s presented as a performance. If your group has particular sensitivities, tell me beforehand and I’ll adjust how I frame things.

If you’d like to know what this looks like at an actual event, read what I do at a party or how a strolling set runs.