Mental Magic
Mental magic is the use of magic within the field of mentalism, sometimes referred to as mental illusion. Mental magic differs from other forms of mentalism such as cold reading or sleight of mind since it relies primarily upon magic tricks that give the illusion of mind reading, as opposed to any form of actual psychological manipulation.
A magician performing a mental magic trick, seemingly reading the mind of a participant in a crowd.
You may wonder how mental magic could apply to covert hypnosis. With covert hypnosis, a big part of what we do is create false illusions that we hope to make people believe. If someone believes in something, then in their world that thing is real. By making someone believe in such false realities we can use hypnosis and NLP on a subject to work many other wonders. It’s important you understand that illusion plays a big role within covert hypnosis, and mental magic is the field that you will be learning all these illusory techniques from.
Now we won’t be covering sleight of hand or other forms of magical tricks that are typically suited for magical shows, instead we will be covering specific techniques that will cause a person to question their beliefs of the world. It’s by creating this form of deception that we give the illusion that something is real even though it isn’t, and a person becomes much easier to persuade as they begin to question themselves, and buy into the false belief we’re offering them.
A person visibly questioning their beliefs, surrounded by illusionary images representing false realities.
Whilst I won’t be going into the details of any specific mental tricks within this post, I shall use an example of the precise form of mental magic I am referring to.
Let’s say that someone approaches you, and asks you to think of any number you want. You think of a number, let’s say the number , and the person responds with the number you’re thinking of. To you, that seems like an impossible feat, as if the person has clearly read your mind, yet there is an entirely logical explanation for how such a trick is possible.
The thing is, is that many people will grasp some paranormal or supernatural belief in an attempt to explain what they can’t normally explain. Worse, they’ll be willing to believe anything that the person conducting the trick tells them. If the mentalist said that they were abducted by aliens and they got mind reading abilities from them, the person will believe in aliens. Likewise, if the mentalist said their power is based upon psychokinesis, then the person will believe in psychokinesis. It’s a sad state of affairs, but most people have very little faith in science and will immediately believe that something they witnessed is scientifically impossible without conducting any form of further analyses. With mental magic, we use this ignorance to our advantage, and play upon peoples beliefs.
As for how the trick of “think of any number” is done, I’m not going to reveal it to you here. The solution is in fact very simple and does not involve any form of magic, trick or psychology at all. I want you to work it out for yourself, thinking of every possible way that such a trick is possible. When you’ve come up with the answer, you’ll know that you’re correct. This is the first exercise to get your mind thinking like a covert hypnotist, as opposed to someone who doesn’t look outside the square.
