Kardar Playing Cards

Chris Gould is a creative genius. One of his many marvelous creations is a reading system known as Kardar. An extension of that is his Kadar Playing cards. He did this by teaming up with another person on kickstarter. If you Google Kadar playing cards you're bound to find some complaints about a lack of communication after funding. None of that had anything to do with Chris and if you find that you would like the Kadar playing cards I urge you to go through him on Alchemy Moon for them.

The Kadar Playing Cards are his efforts to bring his kadar system to full poker deck printed by the US playing card company. I got three decks, the leather case, the coin, and both books. Worth ever penny. It's an interesting system and even if I bought the full reading book I like the system in the little booklet aimed at the average card user (read shut eye if you must) Each card has two short sentence on them bit like a fortune cookie. One sentence is usually more upbeat that the other. The art is superb and there are many secrets. Also there is a private forum with oh so much info. Chris is much more focused on building a community than on cranking out ideas.

Devils Library Vol 1

I really like the idea behind the Devil's Library of a bizarre effect that more affordable. So for the buy in price you get a leather card case that look like a book and a deck of old style cards. And an aged photograph. You also get a paper book and a pdf explaining things.

One of the down sides is that you have to age the deck yourself. The method if fully explained in the pdf. It's not hard but it is a skill and I think I'd need to do more decks to really get a good consistent look but I doubt my efforts as is would ruffle many feathers in performing.

The booklet and PDF leave no stone unturned in explaining the effect Chris Gould devised and it is so very clever. The effect is one of spirit writing and but with the include props and tale it could be so much more. I'm very happy with my purchase even if the effect is not in wheelhouse.

Lebanon Circle's 3 Wishes / Lycanthrope Moon

3 Wishes 3 coins 3 effects. Turn around from ordering to receiving was not too bad seeing as it had to cross an ocean. And the coins, images fail to capture their beauty. I was one of the early orders that got extra practice coins which look like ones that were rejects from the plating process. I kind of want to plate one of the extras in copper.

As for the effects they are very clever and run the gamut from pure story telling to a bit knuckly. The first effect is appropriately called 3 Wishes, in it you tell the story of child that wanders into the woods and ends up face to face with a fairy who give her a choice of one out of three wishes which corresponds to a colored moons. The effect is based on Docc Hilford's Nightmare Coins which in turn is based on the ubiquitous uncle pulling coins from behind your ear as a child. I think the tale they give you to tell could stand on it's own without the effect. Though I feel it does have a down side, there is a chance that if you perform for a single person and they pick the wrong wish there is no good ending for the magic side. Lycanthrope moon is basically a bit of wolf lore that turns out to prove the participant is possibly a werewolf. It's interesting and straightforward but lacks the level of story telling in the first one. The last effect is listed in the pdf as a bonus. It's called Clair de Lune and it's move heavy by comparison, not difficult moves but they were initially awkward for me. It's about moon light and it's effects, you start with two silver moons that change one at a time into two gold moons and then end with one of each.

In addition to the coins there is a nice wooden box, I did have spot of trouble with the box it's held close by two sets of magnets one of the magnets pulled it's partner out of it seating but it was relatively easy fix. The PDF also cover some extra slights and instruction for a hold out. Under certain lighting conditions the silver and gold can be hard to tell apart, the PDF say this is intentional but I'm not a fan.

Definitely not cheap but it is important to remember it is actual silver and gold involved, it is also important to keep in mind you are purchasing a utility item, and that with some imagination you could have way more routines for it than just those provided. That said I am happy with my purchase,

Bill Montana Penguin Live Lecture

I knew of Bill Montana from the bizarre forums I frequent, I knew him to be a stand up guy, he's just given away so much good information there. His Dark History and Pitch Book Posts are must reads. And he gave me a copy of his spirit bell book for free just because I was curious. So I was surprised to see all the negative reviews on his lecture. I checked on the cafe for reviews and found it to be a bit more balanced, definitely seems a polarizing lecture, people either loved it or hated it. So with that in mind plus my personal knowledge of the man I decided to get this lecture.

After viewing I can see why so many people hated it, but in my opinion those people are idiots. I think the biggest problem for penguin's audience is the lack of a line of standard easy to reproduce effects. Not everything he does works perfectly but seeing as he aims to be real, that's the sort of thing you have to expect from real life. A lot of what he teaches lacks the ta-da moment of the sort of stuff we normally see from penguin. What it does have is the potential for a deeper connection and impact. Take his Pulse effect, where two or more peoples heartbeats synchronize. What's more personal than your heartbeat. Take the effect away from traditional performance venue and over into say a private reading. You do enough readings on readings and you'll see the idea of doing a little something before the reading to help get on the same mental page as the sitter and in less esoteric books it's often some simple mentalism trick. Instead use pulse and at the start tell them that you need to get lined up with them then after say "Two hearts beating in unison and where the body goes the mind follows."

The lecture also came with two PDF's, The Lotus Flower and Psychokinetic Plastic. Both are wonderful ideas that we get to see in use in the video.

Thoth's 27 Messengers by Craig Browning

Thoth's 27 messengers

So full disclosure, while I find no fault with the author from a technical stand point I do feel strongly about him as a person. So my review may be harsher than it needs to be. If not for the supplier I trust, the booklet, and the mention of Philmon Vanderbeck being the inspiration I would not have purchased this item.

So lets get right down to it, this is a reading method jazzed up with 21 card trick. And it is good. But it was good the first time I read it in the supplemental OORT. More on that in a second. There is also some fascinating history about the 21 card trick, from the introduction of 7*7*7. In fact pages 6 - 18 (more than half the actual content) seems to be entirely from other works. The details of the actual method matches my supplemental OORT word for word. The difference is one of formatting. The issue I have is I was promised a work based on an idea of Philmons not an exact copy of his work.

As for the actual works of the effect, theres a small fib on the ad copy for that as well. It says it uses just the major arcana but in actuality you also need 4 aces and a blank card. (I've never had a tarot deck that came with a blank card so their existence was news to me) So its a 27 card trick. One of the things I'd liked to have seen included is a way to scale it down. Its a math trick and should be work able with any multiples of three.

As for the bits of this tome not penned by others we have most of that space filled with a sample reading. Which I found to be well worth the page space. There's also a bit on what to do if the wrong card comes up or if a dark card is the one picked.

There is also one page devoted to the booklet. The booklet is a great idea in theory, but what you're given needs a lot of work before it looks professional enough to hand out to people paying for your services.

I'm not unhappy with my purchase, I've paid more for less. In the end I feel that you're better off spending a few bucks more on The supplemental OORT which has the exact method plus so much more.

If you found this review helpful or thought it sucked let me know in the comments.

Edit to add, I've been informed that the reason it has to be 27 and not something smaller like 12 or 9 is because that is the amount that will let you spell out any name.

Slate Killers by Bob Cassidy

I'll come right out and say that I don't think this was worth $20. I think you can tell Penguin thinks so too otherwise why tie on some unrelated info to the end, more on that later.

It opens with a performance, pretty strait forward. Bob opens on the history of the items as legit tools. Then he has a participant hold the slates while another person picks a word out of the dictionary. That takes the first 10 minutes out of 50.

Then cut to Bob alone at a table. He start by explaining how to justify the use of slates. Then he shows several ways to prove the slates blank and a few sample routines including how to to properly Hindu force. Here and there he sort of mentions other idea and methods without to much detail. Then he says his good byes and the screen goes black. This is at about thirty minutes. The last twenty minutes are about a threaded dictionary and a peek wallet.

It's good info but it could have been more rather easily. I think penguin realized that it was a little on the light side info wise for the price point or why add the threaded dictionary and wallet part. The threaded dictionary is a dictionary that lets you open it to the same place a participant did. Which in this context is kind of useless. Slates are not really a find out what the participant picked and mark it up that way kind of tool. It can be done and how to do it is sort of mentioned offhandedly but they definitely couldn't say they taught how to mark the slates after you know what spectator chose.

I think I would have appreciated him showing us how to make the slates, he just says to cut them out of DVD cases about playing card size. So making nice slates takes trial and error. His look really nice, the one's I've made so far are no where near as nice or as uniform. And so far I've ruined three cases. Just finding case that I could use was a pain. Most had that recycle symbol punched into them. I also would have like more info on handlings I thought of a few obvious options watching it that could have been added. I would also have like to see some info on presenting them as spirit contact tool seance style. You know actually delivering a message. The video really just shows them a reveal for standard mentalism.

If you found this review helpful or thought it sucked let me know in the comments.

Daemon Tarot Review

So I was in the Bsarnes and Noble and I saw the Daemon Tarot, which is an excessively misleading name. For while it and tarot are both decks of cards there the similarity ends. So instead of being the tarot with demon pictures and symbololgy added it is instead a deck of cards depicting daemons from a very old book called The Infernal Dictionary. It comes with a book that is sparse on info but does offer some interesting information on all things depicted and offers an interesting spread. The real question is how were the cards, well keep in mind that this is just my opinion of one deck, but they sucked. Forgetting the fact that you can expect playing card quality from a tarot deck. The cards I revived seem to be from different production run. Half the cards are shorter than the other half. Which can has it uses. But still not happy about it also I don't think they match in tone like I think half of them are subtly lighter. Also my biggest issue is the printing on each card what is basically the text you would find in the book on that card. To be honest if the cards did not have the text under the images I think they still would have had potential. And it still probably good from a reading stand point, the few reading I did with it went well. But it just going to be gathering dust now.

Switchcraft Version 34

It's been over two years since I bought Switchcraft but I got an email today about an updated version and I guess a few emails must of went to spam because this is 4 versions past the last update I got. I've not read it yet but I know it'll be good. I just feel like mentioning this cause nothing else I've bought in all my magic time gets free upgrades like this. It's approaching 800 pages and it would have been all too easy for Elliott J. Bresler to release all this work as 4 separate books at $25 a piece. This work is way past being a good value for the price and would hurt no ones collection.

A Magicians Guide to Tarot by Paul Voodini

So when I saw that Voodini was coming out with a book on how to read the Tarot with a pretty cheap early bird pricing I figured why not.

A bit of background I do have some experience with a Tarot deck, I tried learning the whole deck a few times in the past, and for a while I did a tarot horoscope blog as a way to familiarize my self with the cards. But now I really only use the Major Arcana and my style is based 100% on the Fools Journey. So I can't really say that I know the traditional meanings of the cards. 

So lets get into it, this book is 87 pages and most of those are taken up by the card meanings. I did not read them all, I got no use for the minor arcana. I mostly skimmed looking for bits where he was talking about something else. Now as I said I do not really know the traditional interpretations of the cards but I don't think these are them. I can say they are nothing like my interpretations. Especially as there are three pairs of major arcana cards Voodini treats as interchangeable. (I  checked and besides being reminded of why I avoid "shut eye" forums, I found that those aren't how a lot of people see those cards) Though I do not think this is an issue, I think it is more important that one is consistent with the meanings they choose than that they use specific meanings. The meanings were given in a way that does look like it would aid in the learning.

As this book is aimed at entertaining with readings Voodini does not get very deep into the reading styles. He only offers two ways, one card readings and three card readings. He only recommends doing the three when thing are slow like at the beginning before you've drummed up interest. As for what to say during the reading Paul's system has you repeating yourself often, for example with each new group there is a little spiel he goes over remind telling people that the death card is not bad news. And with the minor arcana meanings he usually references that cards equal from a regular deck of cards to give the sitter a point of reference.

Now there is a there is a section at the end about mixing the tarot on magic, and I can't say that there really anything fantastic there. It opens with Voodini saying he used to be anti-trick when it came to the tarot, and I'm not to sure it still isn't. Most of the effects seem more like thought exercises that tested material. Though a few of them do recommended forcing a card on someone as part of the reading/effect and that I'm a bit iffy on, seems like cheating. I think if you want to add magic to your reading then the best bet would be go get a copy of Magic Mirror by Robert Neale and David Parr. It has a wonderful way of turning the three card reading into a bit of precognition.

Over all its not a bad book, not really happy with the meanings and magic part but the bit on how to offer readings seemed good. And I'd mostly recommend this book to those who had no idea what the cards mean or what to do with them but would like the skill for their repertoire without too much work.

Move by Gianni Vox from Ellusionist

As you may have read on other faster sources the effect can not be done as shown in the clip. I'm not too upset about that because it's a recreation of how it should appear to the spectator if you do it right, but lay spectators should not be viewing a trailer, magicians should be. Plus doing the effect for real in the video would have resulted in another moron kicking up sand because he saw through the effect in the trailer.

The idea I had when I saw the trailer turned out to be wrong (due to faked trailer). I don't know if I'm happy about that. The idea I had was that the signature that does the jumping was on a clear something that was ditched later.  The reason I might not be happy about being wrong about the method is because the complaint I have about this effect is the same as I had with Modulate and I'm not sharing it here for the same reason. And it really does keep me from doing either of the effects until I find a solution I'm happy with. Beyond that it requires a minimal amount of props, and is shown two ways one that uses the deck and one that starts free of the deck.

The video is under nine minutes and starts with the trailer, it's the same level of quality as the other recent downloads I've purchased. I can't really say any of them really felt scripted more like they were just making up what to say as they go along. But for five bucks I see no real reason to complain about that.

Chaos Theory by Danial Madison from Ellusionist.

An in the hands Triumph effect for five bucks sounds good right. I'm not sure one could say that was delivered here. Really it's more of a false shuffle for five dollars. The download glosses over one of the most important bits, getting the selected/named card into position. Madison basically says that he knows the deck so well that finding the named card and getting it in position is no problem. Well that's well and good but what about those of us that lack Madison level skills with a deck? Without the selected card part most of the rest of the routine taught is useless, so it is a bit of hurdle. That said, the false shuffle taught seems easy but it does require getting one hands used to unfamiliar movements, and made my hands sore. Specifically my index fingers which are not used to riffling cards. It looks like a cross of two table shuffles I don't know the name of, but have seen the instructions two. Once I get it down it'll probably be my go to in the hands false shuffle.

Modulate by Dee Christopher form Ellustionist

A nice little card transposition effect, simple and cost effective (to buy, actual use may not be as cost effective).  It's visual and happens free of the deck. It's so simple that I'm surprised it's not in some old book, and it's not a magician fooler. I think that when seeing the full unedited performance at the beginning of the video most will know what's what. The download only costs $5, and it's feel like a rather versatile idea. Dee Christopher shows three variations on it. And regardless of what the ad copy says (though reading it after watching the download I think they may be saying something other than what I think the ad copy implies) I don't think it translates away from cards very easily. All the things that make it work with cards may not be present in other mediums. If two things look the same how will someone know that they switched places until the reveal. And so if you're using something like two index cards a different transposition may be better. My biggest complaint is hard to air with out exposing more than I'd like. But basically I feel really limited in the ability to repeat the effect for multiple audiences and I would have like to have seen that addressed because if Dee Christopher uses this effect with any regularity it must be an issue he has run into.

The Cairo Cards

The Cairo Cards are a marking system for business cards from Mevproshop.com. As most books on billet work suggest marking at least one billet and I liked the idea of the impromptu zener card effects, I decided to give it a go. I did find one review (http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/sutra120489.php) for it, before buying it. I'm not quite the fan that guy is. For me I'd say that my final verdict is "Great idea, iffy execution". In full disclosure I don't have a copy of MS Office, being a Linux user at heart I use open office and have no desire to buy Office, so my first complaint is most likely a result of that. The base copy before changes had some alignment issues, that carried over to printing, I printed them without changing anything to see how they fit on the cards, not well. I know that not every thing has to be perfect but the alignment is noticeably off from card to card, to the point where some of the text left a couple of cards. The way they are put togther fixing the alignment isn't too much of an issue but it is potentially tedious. I'm not too upset about that because I knew pre-purchase I was going to change a lot of the textual design.

Now the first thing I did after I got my files was open the file and try to spot the marking system, I had an idea while looking at them that proved wrong, and I had to re-read the secret part of the manual twice to get it, but once I did it's a pretty easy system to read. Now about my wrong idea, there was a fuzzy bit on each palm that changed a bit from card to card. This turned out to be the word "PROSHOP", that they are marked with the creators mark is not an issue in and of itself. The problem is that it was obviously added to each hand image separately which results in minor variations in placement and the biggest problem is the font is completely different from that already on the hand. A difference that is even clearer when printed out, I can't help but feel that it would be even more evident on a higher resolution that would result if I got the cards printed by a printshop. It's not an issue performance wise but I can't help but feel that I just don't want that to appear so blatantly on something I hand out to people.

As for the actual marking system I feel it's pretty good, it's biggest limitation is distance. It's hard for me to tell which is which after the cards get about an arms length away or in poor light, though the book does off a suggestion on a way to improve the visibility at the cost of deceptiveness. When folded all the possible marks are in the same quarter so as long as you fold that to the outside it's pretty easy to see which you have at a glance. I've tried out the first two of the three routines on people and it went well.

All in all what I got could have been better, and to get all the use out of it I want is going to take a bit of effort on my part. That said I'm basically satisfied with what I got as I got exactly what I was promised.

Cathy Shadow's Doing It For Real review.

Cathy Shadow's Doing It For Real, it's from Paul Voodini but while he may have wrote it down it's content is from another. Cathy Shadow is the pseudonym of a reader Voodini met a psychic fair. Which is important, as once you read the thing you may be tempted to balk at your purchase, but these are techniques used by a real worker as convencer of genuine power. She's someone with no magic or mentalism background and as such these demonstrations lack what some would call "the works" most of it boils down to real intuition. Which Voodini has long claimed a belief in. So if you're looking for the next big magic trick you won't find it here. While these pieces can definitely be use as part of a larger routine, I also like the suggestion that doing  these causally will help you better understand the thoughts, feelings, and emotions experienced by someone who is actually psychic. And remember that a fail now and then can make you seem more legit and you can always follow up with a sure fire hit.

Fragmented Thoughts by Reverend Tristan review

Three effects from a quality Bizarre thinker. 'Tsarology', 'Revelations', and lastly 'And your sins shall be forgiven'. While the eagle eyed of you may have noticed that these effects have been published before. I've definitely seen the first two in Mystic Menagerie. There is definitely more information here than found in the Menagerie. Can't really call them routines cause it's just a description of the effect and and "the works". Tristan says he does that because he wants you to make the presentation 100% yours. And I can't complain, even when a bizarre effect comes with a presentation supplied a huge re-write is usually in order, otherwise you'd be the descendant of every person to ever have a weird happening.

'Tsarology' is psychometry effect with tarot cards. Four spectators take tarot cards, you collect the mixed envelopes and then opening the envelopes one at a time give a reading on cards and identify three spectators and with the last you give the reading and name the card without seeing it. Besides the how to, there is also a little one line cold reading about who would pick that card for each major arcana card which I'm rather sure has plenty of use out side of this effect. I like this effect because it gives not only a reason for the cold reading but also the tarot cards act as a spring board.

'Revelations' is kind of like a biblical conspiracy theory, a page ripped from a bible and a tarot deck and you can show that armageddon is well underway. Not really my thing, and I don't have much to say for it.

'And your sins shall be forgiven' is a sin eater routine. You offer to remove some minor sins from a spectator, and after the flames consume spectators billet you reveal what the sin was. This is definitely right up my ally, I do like the idea of an effect that somehow enriches the lives of those involeved. Thematically it's very similar to Novus Healing, but very different methods and size. This one is a bit larger more of a stage/parlor routine where Novus was best for close up. I bought this tome for this effect it, one of it's moves was recommended to me and I am not disappointed.

Can be found:
http://unholybooks.weebly.com/fragmented-thoughts.html

3 coins 4 your thoughts by Paul Voodini review.

"3 coins 4 your thoughts" is a methodology for giving readings. The book is a little lite on general reading info but there are other sources for that. Most of the pages are taken up with the system. A simple system that use 3 coins and 4 phase. One of the things I saw mentioned most often about this work was the versatility and the robustness of it. And I found that to be true, you could give full length readings with this or pare it down for something supper quick, or use it with other systems. And it's not complicated at all, one read through and you should be ready to give it a go. Personally I'm going to drop the last phase, it's just not right for what I do reading wise. I take a bit of a hard line against future telling. But I could see a change I can make and probably use the makes a wish thing as my final phase. It's a good system for impromptu readings and probably easier than palm reading. Voodini writes in a strait forward no-nonsense sort of fashion, that I can appreciate.

Now I do have one complaint and this comes more from my magic performer side than anything. The coins used matter, in that the spectator needs to easily see a difference in value between them. Meaning you really need to use current coins of the realm. Which means that you can't carry around some aged foreign coins that you got from an elderly gypsy. I generally don't carry cash money around with me with the exception of the coins I use for magic. And those aren't really useful for this system. Of course it's not a problem if the one receiving the reading has coins on them. Though if there were a debate about coins kept just to do a reading versus the one the spec has, I'd go for the specially kept side. I don't think that change really spends enough time with one person to take up some of their energies. All in all I find it hard to slam a good metaphysical edge on this presentations but I supposed that if your sitter needs that sort of edge you can always go with palm reading.

The Mystic Menagerie Issue #7

Jacks Victims By Joshua Johnson: A routine based around the victims of Jack the Ripper. At it's basic is an Anagram.

1:11 By Erick Machamer: A wonderfully creepy presentation for the haunted key effect.

Hypnocard by Alchemy Moon Review By Freddie Valentine: A very short review of a card designed to help put people into trances amongst other stuff.

Red Riding Hood By Holly Blue: Not so much a review of two Red Riding Hood adaptions but a focus on the more imagination invoking parts of each film.

Dr Todd interview: The problem with interviews is you have to have heard of the person interviewed to really care about reading it so I skip these.

Tales from the Séance Room By Freddie Valentine: I do enjoy these tales from the field. This one involves the ghost of a witch-finder and the body of a satanist.

The Tooth of Jeremiah Butts By Paul Prater: A heavy on the story telling routine centered around a tooth from a dead man.

Dear Readers by Dale Shrimpton: A few ideas for ways to change up the presentations of various effects.

Destiny... By Fantomas: I like this, a nice short opener that use the tarot and a minimum of sleight of hand.

A Haunted Riddle by TC Tahoe: An introduction to use for your haunted key routine. I don't know if it's because it's a Halloween issue or what but this is the third time presentaions for the haunted key effect has came up this issue.

Zoltar from Alchemy Moon review: Two alchemy moon reviews this issue, all I know is this review makes me want Zoltar.

Sympathetic Card By Vincent: A bizarre presentation for the invisible deck. As presented it's a pretty complicated affair but seems simple enough to make it fit a level of work your comfortable with.


Seance Seating plan By Martyn Hoult: "Chair predictions are a staple item of  a mentalist repertoire." I can honestly say I did not know about chair predictions until I started reading Mystic Menagerie. This article is about spicing  up a seance with a chair prediction.

The 13th Box A Tale of a Dybbuk Box. By Jez Star. I'll be honest I got bored reading the opening bit and ended up skipping the whole article.

The Devil and Beatrice By Roni Shachnaey: A routine about a deal with the devil. There's too much going on in this effect to nail it down to one underlying main effect but the main thrust is transformations.

Tracking the Beast By Jeremy Lefebure: Werewolf effect, great back story.

Bizarre Rants! By Freddie Valentine: This issue the target of Freddie's ire is performers that jump into the seance genre without learning anything about it first.

Lil Dolly By Mark Thorold: A way to turn a doll into a very creepy indicator of spirits present.

Switchcraft supplements.

Just finished the supplements. There is some very very good stuff in there.  The quality is just as good as the main book and for the most part my complaints and compliments remain unchanged. Every thing is simple, strait-forward, and well credited. The problem I have remains the same, in order to achieve simplicity something else has to go and I feel that in this work good choreography is what is given up most often. I feel that nowhere is this more clear than in the Annemann for Everyone supplement. In order to do the Annemann switch deceptively he decides to add blocking. Reaching across the body and doing the switch behind the arm. While this works well for card cheats, I think performers should avoid it. It's bad choreography, it looks bad. It requires you to have something to reach for and if you knew you were going to need it why not have it on the side it needs to be on from the start.

I also kind of feel that it not really Annemann's switch anymore, at the very least you can't use it in all the same ways. With the Annemann switch you should be able to pick up a billet and hand it to someone and somewhere between  those two steps the billets has changed. Besides the bad choreography the simplified moves require more justification for your actions than a more difficult switch.

Good choreography does more than improve the look of things, it makes it harder to deconstruct latter. You don't want your spectator saying to their friends latter "Well he did do _______ so I guess he could have done something then."

If I thought of this as more than a beginners tome the bad choreography would be a larger complaint, but when you're first starting out doable deceptive moves are more important than flawless choreography. When I started in magic like most my original sources were a bit on the random side and one of the results is that I learned the push off double before a regular one. I have a pretty good push off which is a strong double but I spent so much more time alone mastering it than I would have had to do for the regular. Looking I'd have rather been doing magic for people than mastering complicated moves alone because performance skills take just as much time if not more to get the hang of. My audience management skills sucks.

Near the end of the the book there a lot of stuff on the Acidicus Novus peek. Which was a bit of a surprise after all that talk about how good switches are. I would have liked to see more complicated switches but no such luck. Now I know one's entertainment value is not based off the complicatedness of one's moves. As you can learn from the works of Paul Voodini you don't need any moves to be entertaining. But to advance one's skills and avoid plateauing one needs to do deliberate practice and that means practicing at a level above where you're at and learning from your mistakes (so some intermediate moves near the end would have been nice). If you love magic and mentalism as an art shouldn't your goal be to progress your skills. Just doing enough to get by is what you do for work, not for your passion.

One last note there is a mentalist I talk to from time to time on Skype and just about every time we even mention billets he has to tell me about this lecture he attended of a switch master who performed a switch for him that completely floored him. How much more powerful a switch can you get, in front of a mentalist at lecture where all you're talking about is switches. Talk about test conditions, do you need a switch that strong, probably not but I feel you should at least aspire to it.

The Mystic Menagerie Issue #6

Touched By Mark Thorold: Instructions to make a gimmick for PK touch routines.

The Great Magic Wand Shop Hoax by Paul Voodini: A rather enjoyable tale of marketing ploy turned hoax.

Bizarre Rants by Freddy Valentine: Here Valintine lets of some steam, the object of ire is other performer letting the cat out of the bag with their comments on social networks.

The Curious Wands of Crispin Mindebender: A short article on the best wands you never heard about from a maker you never heard of.

Tales from the Seance Room by Freddy Valentine: Tales from the trenches much like the "Tarot Telling Tales" from issue one these are stories of mischievous ghosts and other events from actual performances.

Erebus by Vincent: A vampire ritual and more blood drinking. And by ritual I mean ritual long eventful odd words and actions. I think under it all you would say the effect is a drawing duplication.

The Dwindling Balls by Jez Starr: A presentation for the picture flame gimmick.

Live Transmission ‘Lost’ by Jack Murphee: As far as I can tell this is a US variation of something that appeared issue four (which I don't have at this time)

Making Pendulums By Joshua Johnson: A brief article on how to make your own pendulums for use and for sale.

A Storm in a Teacup By Martyn Hoult: You have a pendulum no what, here we have a method for moving an isolated pendulum.

Review by Freddy Valentine of Speed Trance DVD: Review of a super fast Hypnosis Induction DVD

The Ring of Laetandar By Dan Baines: A lord of the rings presentation for the CSI effect from Lebanon Circle.

Bad Influence: It's looks like a do as I do effect but where the all cards except for the switched ones are the same. The them of the effect is that negative influences have more effect on us than good influences.

Pass me the cards and the routine on a plate by Bruce Graham: This was a little hard to read, near as I can tell its a post from a forum split up with commentary added in.

The Mystic Menagerie Issue #5

Only a few issues after #2 and the quality is not even comparable to the previous issues I have. And even more information between covers. And the links in this one are click-able which I quite like.

Blood Test by Vincent: A very ghoulish version of a psychometry test that requires you to have your spectators bleed. You have an assistant collect a bit of blood with each envelope and then you either sniff or taste and then tell whose blood it is. Interesting but seems like more trouble than it's worth.

Review - The Oracle by Raven: A review of a rather interesting looking oracle system.

Dark Inspiration - Ghost in the Machine: This pretty much the selling point of this issue, plans for a spirit telegraph (from my googling it seems like it was a big deal at one point). It's a bit of a Saturday project but not too complicated. Though as I've said before I'd rather pay someone with the appropriate skills for one than attempt any crafts myself.

Resista’s Liquid Legacy: A light/heavy glass routine with a vaudeville/burlesque theme. This is what actually convinced me to get this issue instead of others and I'm glad I did.

Review - Paul Voodini’s Books: A strait forward review of four books by Paul Voodini. I don't think I've actually heard/read an untoward word about Voodini, which is weird all by itself.

Notes on Creating Routines by Paul Prater: This is an essay where Paul Prater walks you step by step through his creation of a routine that ends with the actual routine created.

Interview - Jon Thompson Subversive Circuits: I'm not really one who is interested in interviews, so I can't say I gave this section my full attention.

Paulo Priest and Scientist by Roni Shachnaey: A bizarre presentation of the magic square with a spanish inquisition theme.

Wizard of Gore by Madelon Hoedt: An essay on being scary, maybe I have the wrong definition of gore but I found the article lacking in gore department. Which I'm glad about, with the title I thought this was going to be about magicians who confuse the shock of seeing blood and guts with actually being scary. But this article was darn good an well worth a read, more like a research paper (with citations) than an article in a magazine.

The Chosen Table By Freddie Valentine: Not really bizarre, this effect is at it's base a prediction effect but it looks like a good one.