Have your friends and family witnessed all your numerology and mind-reading tricks?
After the third or fourth time, the grey elephant from Denmark might not be as exciting.
If you’ve mastered all the easy beginner mentalism tricks in the book, it might be time to amp up your performance repertoire with close-up mentalism tricks!
We’ve got an exciting challenge for mentalists who want to show off their skills.
In this article, we’re going to talk about the 4 best close-up mentalism tricks.
Let’s get to it!
The 4 Best Close-Up Mentalism Tricks to Spice Up Your Repertoire
Mentalists love making audiences believe that they have supernatural and telepathic powers.
If you’re worried about pulling off a mentalism trick up close, try out these beginner-friendly close-up mentalism tricks to spice up your performance:
- Spoon bending
- Draw their image
- Ashes on the arm
- Red hammer
Let’s discuss each one.
1. Spoon Bending
You don’t have to prepare complicated props to wow your audience.
While the spoon-bending trick is easy, the real challenge will be when you perform it up close to an audience of no more than three meters.
There are two methods for the mentalist spoon bending trick.
For the first method, you’ll need two spoons, one bent at a 90-degree angle and the other with just the stem.
Hold the bent spoon in one hand while hiding the bent stem between your thumb and forefinger. At the same time, hold the broken stem between the tips of those fingers.
It should look like you have a straight, intact spoon for the audience.
Slowly let the broken stem fall to create the illusion of the spoon bending.
A big factor in the success of this method is acting as though you’re using all your mental energy to bend the spoon!
Check out this video to see how it’s done:
For the second method, you’ll need to practice holding your audience’s attention!
Grab a cheap metal spoon and find a good distraction to pull this off in front of a small crowd.
Practice engaging your audience, and once you’ve found a good distraction, quickly bend the spoon on a hard surface.
Hold it in a way that the audience won’t see the bend. Then bring their attention back to the spoon and pretend to use your mind to bend it.
Here’s how you can perfect the trick like Paul Weatherbee:
2. Draw Their Image
Here’s another close-up mentalism trick that can blow minds.
While it seems complex, the trick is one of the easiest and most effective mind-reading card tricks.
To do this trick, you’ll need to prepare a deck of cards and their box.
Cut a slit on the underside of the box, right in the middle, crosswise.
Then, you’ll need a blank card.
Now, draw a downward arrow and a box on the blank card. The arrow should point down toward the box.
Place the blank card (now with your drawing) back into the box.
Now onto the performance.
Take out the blank card and ask your participant to draw any image inside the box you drew. The trick is that you’ll be able to draw exactly what they drew.
Once they do their drawing, slide the card back into the box. In reality, you will discreetly slide the card through the slit that you pre-cut.
Quickly glance at the picture and draw the image that you saw.
Ask the participant to reveal their drawing.
Wow your audience as you show the matching images!
Watch TimClarkMagic’s tutorial on this simple yet effective mentalism trick:
3. Ashes on the Arm
Your friends and family will truly believe that you’re a mind reader with this close-up mentalism trick.
Here’s how it goes.
Ask a volunteer to choose a card from the deck.
Then, tell them to write down the card abbreviation on a piece of paper.
Tell them to tear the piece of paper and burn it in an ashtray.
The mentalist then takes the ashes, rubs them on his arm, and the secret on the paper magically appears!
How does this close-up mentalism trick actually work?
To be successful, you need to force your participant to choose the card you want! This means that your spectator thinks he or she is choosing a random card, but in reality, you are influencing him or her to choose the card you set up.
While this may sound complicated, there’s an easy way to get this done.
Place your card of choice on the top of the deck. Using a chapstick or soap bar, write the card abbreviation on your arm.
Then, split your deck in two and ask your participant to choose either the top half or bottom half without context. The goal is to keep the top half where your card is.
So when they choose the bottom half, say that you’ll put it away. If they choose the top deck, say that you’ll use that half.
Since you gave the spectator a choice, it’s unlikely that they’ll ask to shuffle the deck again.
Now, ask the spectator to choose the top card and to repeat the card name repeatedly in their head.
Tell your spectator to write down the card name on a piece of paper.
Fold the paper and light it on fire. As it’s burning, ask your participant to look you in the eye and repeat the card five times.
Rub the ashes on your arm. It should stain your skin except for where the soap is, revealing the card abbreviation!
For another way to let your audience choose your setup card, check out this tutorial:
4. Red Hammer
With numerology or suggestion mentalism tricks, you can trust that they’ll work however close or far you are from an audience.
For this trick, you will need a spectator to answer a few questions.
You’ll give them a folded piece of paper which they’ll open only after answering all your questions.
Here’s how to get it done.
Ask them to compute math problems QUICKLY.
In between computing, ask your spectator to name a color and a tool.
Tell them to say the two words out loud: “Red hammer!”
Open the piece of paper to reveal “red hammer” as well!
How does this mentalism trick actually work? Well, when people are pressured to give a quick answer, 80% of the time, they will come up with something predictable.
So if you ask for a color, red is usually the first answer on their minds. The same is true with hammer for a tool.
Watch Walter Murch explains how the red hammer trick works:
Conclusion
Are you ready for more advanced close-up mentalism tricks?
You don’t have to prepare a lot of props and perform complex sleight of hand.
The real challenge to spice up your repertoire is to carefully study cold reading, body language, and other mentalism tricks from the professionals.
Try out these 4 best close-up mentalism tricks to impress audiences.