I have never tried doing a magic trick; but I remember having a magician come to our high school and put on a show for us, and I really enjoyed it. One of the most interesting parts to me is about hypnosis, and how people can do such strange things when hypnotized. I watched one program on youtube (if I remember right) and the magician hypnotized the subject and told her that she could not see her father, who was also in the room. After this, he had another person stand directly behind the father where most of him could not be seen by the subject. He then asked the subject what the other person was wearing (like a wristwatch), and she could even tell what it looked like and what time it was. How she would be able to do this with someone (her father) standing between her and the other person baffles me. I can kind of understand making someone think that an onion is a peach; but I don't see how you could actually see through a person just because you thought they were not there. What do you think about this, @Billie Lane ?
This is just guessing, but here goes, The magician could have been using confederates. Alrernatively ,if it was genuine, one of the " secrets " of Mentalism is the knowledge that we see a lot more than we think.This has been proven with hypnosis too. A magician asks two or three people to place say, 50 items ,possibly borrowed from the audience on a table while the Magician is blindfolded.and one of them makes a written list.The blindfold is removed and the Magician is given 10 seconds to memorise all the items. He is then blindfolded again and asked to repeat the list. He does so successfully. The experiment is then repeated by the Magician but this time a member of the audience does the guessing and may remember 6 out of the fifty. Next the Magician hypnotizes a volunteer who is told he/she will memorize the full list in less than 5 seconds. When asked to do so after being blindfolded in turn , the volunteer guesses every item correctly. The magician knows that the subconscious mind is lazy so he trains his own subconscious mind until practice makes perfect. In the case of the volunteer he speaks directly to the subconscious which has " photographed " everything. in regard to the father/daughter trick, the girls subconscious has taken a snapshot of everyone who should be there including everyone in her peripheral vision not just those directly in front of her. The hypnotist has told her ,that her father isn't there, and she looks at her subliminal snapshot to find whoever else is missing from the snapshot which must be whoever is standing behind her father. in theory she would also remember what he should be wearing. The subconscious mind stores sensory data as " input " ,but it doesn't concern itself with logic or the lack of it. It just does what it's told. in this case -find the person standing where her father should have been. A lot of Mentalism involves tricking the subconscious.
What an awesome explanation, and the way that you explain it, it makes a lot of sense, too. When you see something that is televised, then there is always the question of whether it was all set up before hand and then filmed to make it appear like magic. This one was just a video that someone had made of a live performance, if I remember right. I sometimes listen to PMA tapes at night, and some of them are subliminal, and some are self-hypnosis. I have not seen a lot of improvement from using them, so maybe there is something that I am just not doing quite right. I realize that my question has drifted off-topic, but I did sort of segue into it.
@ Yvonne Smith Here is another one that involves subconscious responses. There is an old trick seldom practised nowadays where a magician asks a volunteer to select a Book from a bookcase , open at a random page ,and then write down a line from the page. The Magician meantime is either blindfolded or out of the room. This was often performed in Victorian days where the Magician was a dinner-guest and the host had a large library, which made it more effective. The Magician ,after re-entering the room or removing his blindfold ,would then take hold of the volunteers arm in a particulor way and ask him to walk with him while with his other hand he searched along the bookcase looking for the Book. He would find it and next he would ask the volunteer to turn the pages and then he would tell him to stop when the Magician felt the vibrations from the correct page. Next, the Magician still holding the volunteer's arm would run his finger lighty over the page until he settled on a sentence. He would read out the sentence and it would be verified correct by the written note. Needless to say it was performed to loud applause. It was not an easy trick to perform and required month's to years of practice. The secret is in how the Magician holds the person's arm. The volunteer's subconscious triggers micro-muscular contractions which can be felt by the Magician's hand the moment he gets to the book, the correct page and the correct sentence. I believe the last person to perform it on stage was Al Koran. P.S. The best results from subliminal tapes/cd's etc occur when you are only using one tape/c.d, for one thing every night for at least 30 days. As I said before the subconscious is lazy and needs convincing you seriously want changes to occur and you are not just being curious. This apply's to Lucid Dreaming too, few people get instant results and have to persevere with the prescibed practises for weeks, sometimes month's before they get a result. After the first Lucid experience, however, it becomes much easier.
@Billie Lane - do you recall a card trick based on mathematics ? I'm very vague about this now, but I think someone had to choose a number and no matter how many times the cards were shuffled, that number always came up I was doing this trick when I was a teenager and was amazed how it worked !! Wish I could still do that one
@ Patsy Faye I don't think I remember that particular one but there are thousands of variations of card tricks. Most card tricks are broken down into finding a selected card. Forcing a selected card by sleight of hand. Suggesting a selected card between a particular sequence of numbers 1-10 for example. Automatic or self-working tricks that are sequential or mathematical in nature, that don't require the Magician to find the card at all. Once the card is known to the Magician the rest is showmanship. This isn't comprehensive, but the point is, that there are only so many ways of finding a selected card ( including Marked & Stacked decks ). The basic tricks are fairly simple, it is the embellishment and the narrative that makes them appear mysterious and complex. The trick in question could have been worked using a marked deck or alternately a stacked deck. A marked deck is self-explanatory, a stacked deck is a prearranged and memorized deck that appears on public observation to be absolutely mixed. in skilled hands a marked deck can be shuffled and unshuffled over and over so the handling is imperceptble. A stacked deck can also be shuffled to create another differently stacked deck which makes some tricks appear to be impossible. Card magic ,to an extent , is like learning Music, you first learn the chords, - the techniques of finding the card, then the scales - the stacking orders, and the seperate notes -memory systems and maths. then you put it together as a Chord-Melody arrangement for a particular song or card trick. Memory and practice establish dexterity, then you just add some basic psychology and you have a stage-magician in the making.
I used to know a few card tricks but can't remember them now......too bad. Grandsons would have been impressed.