Introduction

Hi guys! We’re back. I had to hijack control of the blog from the editor so that I could post my stuff, he’s dead for all I know. I would comment on how Anagram “Month” went, but I have no access to the statistics. The damned editor does.

Now you guys are in for a treat, this is something that I consider as a little secret weapon of mine. A lot of my ideas for posts have come from self reflection after performances. There are a lot of subtleties and concepts I use unconsciously, and sometimes it takes me time to even realize that these ideas are worth sharing. The following idea is also one from the unconscious.

The Concept

The idea is to carry a singular prediction (of anything you plan to get your spectators to name). The prediction you use needs to be psychologically appealing enough for it to be chosen in performances, but not appealing enough that it’s just plainly obvious. Let’s use a playing card for ease of example. The 7 of Diamonds would be a decent choice because it gets chosen a fair amount, but it is not as obvious of a choice as the Queen of Hearts or the Ace of Spades. Once you prepare the prediction, you’ll want to place it somewhere that is easy to access, but hidden, like in a breast pocket. Then, you’ll want to do effects where you have people name their selections. Then, you simply wait until someone names your hidden prediction. The best part about this principle is that you have absolutely nothing to lose by doing this. You simply either get a perfect hit, or they never knew your prediction existed. Below are two recent performance stories to help explain how I’d use this.

Story 1

Some months ago, at a big work party, I was asked to perform for everyone. Word had gotten out that I was a magician, and the boss had asked me to do a mini-strolling gig for the evening. I accepted the challenge. It was a cool summer evening, so I just had a cotton button-up shirt and slacks on. I brought a singular deck of cards, a sharpie, and a sole 7 of Hearts in my shirt breast pocket.

The deck of cards was in a memorized deck order, so I was jazzing with whatever cards people said out loud. I was doing effects like card to box, Mnemonicosis, ACAAN, etc. When I got to the last table, I asked someone to name a card. A woman at the table named the 7 of Hearts. I said “now, what if instead of finding it in the deck you just shuffled, I had already found it? You see, I took one card from a completely different deck, and placed that card in my breast pocket. Let me empty out all my other pockets to show you that they are completely empty. I had a feeling you’d say that card, that’s why I put it there. It’s not like I could have taken it from the deck on the table because it has a completely different coloured back. Please, remove it.” I gestured for someone next to her to go into my breast pocket and remove the card. She turned it over to show everyone that it was the 7 of Hearts. Everyone went crazy.

Story 2

Two weeks ago, I sat down next to my coworker and asked her if she wanted to see a trick. She eagerly said yes. I asked her to name a playing card (the deck of cards I was going to use was still hidden in my pocket). She named the 7 of Diamonds. I asked her if she wondered why I didn’t have a deck with me. She said that she did. “You see, the reason why I’m not using a deck is that I knew you were going to say that. That’s why I wrote it down earlier. Seriously. Come with me.” I got her to get up and walk with me over to my desk. There was no one else in the office, so there was no way she could entertain the idea of an accomplice sneaking a billet onto my desk after she had named it. My desk was in view the whole time. We walked over and I pointed out a lone navy envelope on my desk. There was nothing else around it. I asked her to open it up and inside she found this:

It’s Halal!

The interesting thing is, I wasn’t lying at all during my little preambles before the revelation. This super clean, ultra hit is also a moment of Halal Magic (Jerry approved). What you are saying to them is true. You did specifically put the 7 of Hearts from another deck in that pocket (or write it down, or what have you). You do not have any other cards hidden on your person. You did have a feeling that the card in your pocket would be named.

Why I Don’t Have More Outs

Yes, you could carry around multiple outs and increase your odds of a hit, but I prefer not to do so for two reasons. The first reason is that I use this for convenience and as a “free hit”. I don’t want to be carrying around a lot of outs with me. The second and more important reason is that after the revelation, you can instantly say “now maybe you think I have a card in every pocket, or in my wallet, or in my phone case, or up my sleeves. Please pat me down, check every pocket, take my wallet and look inside of it. I only had one card with me this evening, the very card you simply thought of.” I think this is an important touch because it kills the most obvious method in their mind.

“Let’s Hear Some Non-Card Examples!”

What are some non-card versions of this I’ve used in the past? Well, thanks to this blog post by Marc Kerstein about Wikitest, I learned that “Dog” was the most searched for item by WikiTest participants. What I would do is have an envelope with a billet that had “Dog” written on it, and that would be inside of my phone case, waiting to be unleashed as a kicker ending.

In this post, I wrote about the high hit rate that eggplant gets, when you ask people to name a vegetable. I had that in my phone case (my main out was carrot, and that was in my wallet. In that case I had two outs, but this is a rare occurrence). When I asked the girlfriend of a magic friend to name a vegetable, she said “eggplant”. I asked her if I had my phone wallpaper as an eggplant, if she would be impressed. She said yes. I explained that perhaps it could be an app, or voice recognition. She hesitantly agreed. Then I said I had something even more impossible. An envelope inside of my phone case… Later that day, that magic friend said to me: “Drew, that eggplant thing earlier, how the fuck?”

Conclusion

I wanted to end this post with two more mentions of other posts where Loaded Lightning made an appearance, and why I decided to call it the Loaded Lightning Principle. If you read my post Jazz in Social Magic #5: Cloud Seven, you’ll see that this is just the Loaded Lightning principle but I made the prediction on the fly. In another one of my older posts, Jazz in Social Magic #2: Lightning Strikes Twice, I used a prediction printed on the box, I didn’t even need to have any extra items on me. In the post I wrote that I “realized” the revelation printed on the box but to tell the truth, I was waiting throughout each effect during that performance for the 4 of Diamonds to come up. In that situation, instead of someone naming the card, they had coincidentally shuffled it to the top. It was the title of that post that influenced this one.

The outcomes in the performances outlined in this post weren’t pure coincidences. I had allowed the outcome to be able to occur. Load that lightning on your person and you’ll find it striking way more often than you expect.