is psychokinesis
What Is Mind Reading & Mentalism
That's a good question, to quote Wikipedia..
Mentalism - Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, use mental acuity, cold reading, hot reading, principles of stage magic, and/or suggestion to present the illusion of mind reading, psychokinesis, extra-sensory perception, precognition, clairvoyance or mind control. Hypnosis may also be used as a stage tool.
This definition is spot on - take note of the words 'present the illusion of mind reading'. I haven't given the definition of mind reading for a very good reason, as the 'real' definition pertains to a superhuman ability and in my opinion an ability that based on evidence, doesn't exist. This on the other hand is another debate for a whole other day.
Mind Reading as you know it, performed on TV by magicians/mentalists/mind readers etc. is merely a form of Mentalism (see above) - simple magic tricks dressed up to represent real mind reading tricks. This may seem fairly obvious to most of you but believe me – many, many people believe people can actually read minds, which for us mentalists/mind readers, is great news.
I have previously written an article on the persona of the mentalist so I won't go into detail here but being congruent is very important when performing mind reading tricks and some mentalists do it better than others. You need to choose between being psychic or being a body language/human behavioural expert. You cannot be both to your audience as they will assume there is general trickery (which of course there is) going on.
There's a thin line between the mentalist and the magician. The main one being the presentation of the effect. A mentalist will usually have a false explanation behind the effect where as a magician will not usually give an explanation and say it was merely magic. Without a false explanation the audience will come to their own conclusion and usually it will be the actual method used e.g. sleight of hand.
In my opinion this is what makes a mentalism effect much stronger than a standard magic effect. It's all in the presentation.
So back to my original point and to summarise.. mind reading tricks are merely mentalism tricks that have a false explanation of using mind control or telepathy using psychological tricks or psychic ability. Mind reading tricks come under the umbrella of mentalism tricks as a whole and they are virtually one in the same thing
About the Author
To start impressing your friends and complete strangers visit mind reading tricks. Learn how to do mentalism effects on the free blog at http://www.ultimatemindreading.com/blog
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