VATICINIUM EX EVENTU

JARED KOPF
photographs by
Elayna Mitchell

DARK ARTS PRESS

 For
Laynie & Martin

Copyright © 2016 by Jared Kopf. All rights reserved.

With the exception of short quotations for the purpose of review, no part of this
book, text, or photographs, may be photocopied, reproduced in any form or by any
means, stored in a retrieval system, electronic or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher. No part of this book may be photocopied, transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior permission of
the publisher.

Broadcast performance rights for the routines herein (including, but not limited to,
Internet, television, video, or by any other medium known or to be invented), as well
as conflicting live performance rights, are reserved by the author. Only written
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The author has made every effort to trace the holders of copyright in illustrations and
quotations. Any inadvertent omissions or errors may be corrected in future editions.

First published in the United States of America by Dark Arts Press.

35798642

Cover image by Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1829. Folger ART Box R167 no.20.
Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Proofread by John Wilson, Paul Vigil, and John Lovick
Designed by Jared Kopf
 CONTENTS

Preface 5

The Card in the Envelope 9

Steal this Trick 19

The Oneiromancer’s Index 31

 Preface

The object to impossible location is one of the classic plots

of conjuring for good reason. Whether it’s a borrowed
shilling to a nest of boxes,1 a florin to a ball of wool,2 a
ring to stack of envelopes,3 or a signed playing card to a
wallet, 4 a magical translocation will always resonate with
an audience. The translocation’s only problem is the very
nature of its effect because it makes an audience ask the
obvious question: How did that get in there?
Unless they’re watching Tommy Wonder, 5 few
people, however credulous, ever conclude that the object
truly dematerialized and then reappeared inside the nest
of boxes, envelope, or lemon. 6 (Then again, Wonder
himself found out how hard it was to convince his

1 E.g., Hoffmann. Modern Magic. New York: Dover, 1978, pp. 197-98.
2 E.g., ibid., pp. 198-99.
3E.g., Carney, John. The Book of Secrets: Lessons for Progressive Conjuring. Los
Angeles: Carney Magic, 2002, pp. 260-73.
4 E.g., Robert-Houdin, Jean-Eugène. Essential Robert-Houdin. Edited by
Todd Karr. Los Angeles: Miracle Factory, 2006, pp. 157-58.
5See Wonder, Tommy, and Stephen Minch. The Books of Wonder. Vol. 2.
Seattle: Hermetic Press, 1996, pp. 267-318.
6Downs, T. Nelson, and John Northern Hilliard. The Art of Magic. New
York: Downs-Edwards Company, 1909, p. 329.

5
audiences of the effect, with all its perfect imperfections.
Or should I say, imperfect perfections?7 ) Furthermore,
even if the method were obscure enough to make an
audience rule out all natural explanations, an important
question remains for the magician to answer: Does this trick
demonstrate a power worthy of a wizard? The audience may be
left asking how it was done; but they will rarely, if ever, be
left pondering what it means.
Of course, the effect depends on how the trick is
framed. Talented performers over the centuries have
presented the object to impossible location under variously
impressive pretexts, but it’s the mystics, soothsayers, and
mentalists who have impressed me the most. Some clever
people realized early on that by reframing the effect as a
prediction (or as a demonstration of mind control), they
could use the same loading methods available to the
prestidigitators without causing the audience to ask the
dreaded question. Instead, the audience would already
know the answer: he put the object in there earlier just as
he claimed to have done. Indeed, the audience would be
in the lovely Erdnasian position of not suspecting, let
alone detecting, anything to the contrary.
The following three prediction effects explore this
approach to the object to (or should it be in?) impossible
location. Methodologically, there’s very little different or
new here. The card trickster who is adept at false shuffling,
palming, and loading cards into a gaffed wallet8 or stack of

7 Supra note 5, pp. 319-24.

8 Washington/Jennings/Le Paul Wallet, Balducci/Kaps, etc.

6
envelopes 9 will be able to perform each of these effects
without too much trouble. Mind readers conversant with
the standards of mentalism may be persuaded to brush up
on some challenging sleight of hand. No matter what kind
of magician you are, I hope you find these predictions
worthy of having been foreseen.

9LePaul, Paul. The Card Magic of LePaul. Brooklyn: D. Robbins & Co.,
1987, pp. 215-18.

7
 The Card in the Envelope
You know I always avoid prophesying beforehand,
because it is much better policy to prophesy after
the event has already taken place.
— Winston Churchill10

The magician removes a pack of playing cards from its

box and begins to riffle-shuffle the cards on the table. As
the cards riffle off his fingertips he looks at the audience
and says, “I might as well be upfront about it. To
accomplish what I am about to show you, you have to
walk down the black alley one evening and meet the man
in the black suit. He has a black mustache, wears a black
hat and a black cane. He holds a black leash attached to
the neck of a black dog. He takes out a contract written in a
language long forgotten and really tiny print, and you prick
your finger with a silver needle and sign your name on the
dotted line . . . I’ll let you decide if the trade was worth it.”
Continuing to shuffle, the magician looks at a
gentleman in the front row and says, “Sir, you’ve been
watching me closely since I sat down. This leads me to
believe you’d be the best to make the first decision tonight.
This is a standard pack of playing cards, straight from the
drugstore; and like all regulation decks it comprises red
and black cards. Would you prefer red or black?”

10 Churchill, Winston. Onwards to Victory. Rosetta Books 2013.

9
 The man looks a bit confused, but the magician
gives him an affirming grin, and the man says, “Black.”
“Black it is then,” says the magician. “Thank you
for your decision. But before I move on, may I ask, do you
believe that decision was made of your own free will?”
The man says, “Yes.”
“Good. The man in the black suit asked me the
same question, and I gave him the very same answer you’ve
just given me. A black card indicates a dark side, which is the
part of you that you rarely show to people: you often see the
brutal truths of the world, and your reluctance to share them
comes from a secret kindness. I like that.”
Continuing to shuffle, the magician directs his
attention to a lady and says, “In a pack of playing cards,
the black suits are Spades and Clubs. Name either one
you’d like . . . Spades? Very well. And that was of your
own free will? I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I
want you to know that you can change to clubs if you
wish. No? . . . Spades it is then. Spades would indicate
you’ve been focused on work quite a bit lately — so
focused that you’ve placed pleasure on the back burner for
the time being. Remember not to take it off the stove
entirely. Your work will be the better for it.”
Turning to another gentleman, the magician says,
“Sir, as I shuffle these cards, I want you to imagine all
thirteen Spades are floating before you. Reach out and
grab one of these invisible cards and tell us, did you grab
the Nine, the Seven, the Queeen? Which one? . . .”
“The Four,” he says.
“And that decision was of your own free will as
well, of course. But I’m not surprised, sir. A grounded
person like you would be drawn to such a stable number.
So, together your three wills have generated a random

10
card: the Four of Spades. It very well could have been a
Club, or even one of the red cards, but it wasn’t. Instead,
you’ve created the Four of Spades, a card that warns us of
darker times, but also reminds us that we have the skill and
wherewithal to overcome them.”
He gives them one final shuffle and then picks up
the pack.
“A moment ago I told you that this was a standard
pack of cards, but that wasn’t entirely true. As a magician,
I am obligated to lie to you, and you are obligated not to
hold it against me. But now, I will be perfectly honest. This
pack isn’t complete.”
He begins to deal the cards face up and says, “In
other words, if you counted these — one, two, three, four,
five, six — all the way through the pack, when you
reached the last card it would be on count fifty-one. And
there’s a simple reason for this. I took one card out before
I started. I won’t bore you by counting them. There’s an
easy way to see what I say is true.”
The magician turns the rest of the pack face up,
places it on top of the previously dealt cards, and gives
them all a wide ribbon spread from right to left so that the
audience can see every index.
“All you need to do is look for the Four of Spades,
and you’ll see what I mean.”
The front row leans in and begins to look for the
Four of Spades in the spread. After a moment, they all
look up, perplexed.
“You see, about a week ago, when I opened this
pack to break it in for this evening’s show, I removed one
card. And so that you wouldn’t dismiss this as a clever feat
of sleight of hand, legerdemain, or prestidigitation, I took

11
that card, sealed it in an envelope and mailed it to myself
to make it official.”
The magician reaches into his pocket and removes
his wallet. He opens the wallet and unzips its inner
compartment. He removes a stack of correspondence,
photographs, and various other keepsakes, which are all
wrapped together in a rubber band. The magician
removes the band and sorts through his mail until he
comes across an envelope addressed to whom it may
concern, care of the magician.
He hands the envelope to the lady and says, “We’ll
all sell our souls for something. We just have to decide
whether we’ll use the transaction for good or evil. Long
ago, I signed a contract so that I could send this letter to
the three of you today. Tear it open. Inside you’ll find
something good, which you created together of your own
free will.”
She tears open the envelope and removes a single
playing card: the Four of Spades.

***

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last, to realize that
having a card signed before you secretly load it into your
wallet actually prevents the method from achieving its full
potential. The implications of a prediction (e.g., the future
is determined and, therefore, could be known by some
Laplacean Demon; or human beings do not have contra-
causal free will and can be controlled like marionettes) are
much more intellectually and emotionally disturbing than
the implications of a translocation (e.g., the hand is
quicker than the eye). Besides, you might as well go for it.
As Karl Hein has pointed out, even if your audience is full

12
of doubters, their only recourse is to think that you
somehow put the card into an envelope, sealed it, wrapped
it up amongst the rest of your correspondence, and then
put the whole bundle in your wallet — which is, of course,
the “effect” of “Card to Wallet.”11 No matter how the
effect is perceived, one way or the other, you’re going to
achieve one of the most powerful effects in close-up magic.
Many great magical artists have performed the
effect much in the way I’ve just described. Jimmy Grippo’s
card to envelope (as performed for Orson Welles on the
Merv Griffin Show), while technically a translocation, still
did away with the superfluous signature. Grippo relied on
a brilliant pocket index so that the selection was
undoubtedly free, and many performers have done the
same.12 Others, whom I’ve relied upon here, have used
what Simon Aronson has called “The Open Index.”13 The
idea dates back to well before the time of Erdnase (who
hints at the idea in his exposition of the “prearranged

11 Hein, Karl. Lecture, The Magic Castle, Hollywood, January 25,

2015.
12 See e.g., Annemann, Theodore. Practical Mental Effects. New York:
Holden’s Magic Shops, 1944, p. 94 (using an index of billets with the
names of playing cards and a hat or cup instead of an envelope or
wallet); see also Corinda, Tony. Step 4 of Thirteen Steps to Mentalism:
Predictions. London: Corinda’s Magic Studio, 1958, p. 92 (using an index
of cards already sealed in envelopes and pretending to remove one from
a wallet in full view; also recommending using a “slit wallet” to feed the
freely named card into the envelope).
13Aronson, Simon. Simply Simon: The Magic of Simon Aronson. Chicago:
Simon Aronson, 1995, pp. 222-38.

13
deck”14 ). I didn’t realize its power until I saw Michael
Close lecture on the subject some time in the mid-90s.
After witnessing Close’s miracles with the open-index
feature of the memorized stack, I quickly set out to
memorize a deck so that these wonders could also be my
own. It wasn’t long before I was doing Dai Vernon’s
“Triumph”15 with a freely named card16 and “The Card in
the Envelope” explained below. Shortly thereafter, I would
see the maestro Juan Tamariz take the idea to the realm of
dreams. Despite the myopia of youth, it was easy to
recognize one of the most powerful tools in card magic.
“The Card in the Envelope” has too many
precursors to cite, but my preferred method is essentially a
hybrid of the mechanics from Nikola’s “Unconscious
Thought Transmission”17 and Paul LePaul’s “Cards in
Sealed Envelope.”18 As in Nikola’s trick, you begin with
the deck in memorized order and use a peek and cut to
bring the named card under your control. In your left
inside jacket pocket you have a stack of LePaul’s envelopes
(complete with pictures, a check, and other genuine

14 Erdnase, S.W. The Expert at the Card Table. Canada: Self-published,

1902, p. 181 (producing any card called for by peeking the bottom card
and using a two-handed shift, thus “bringing it into view”).
15 Starke, George, ed. Stars of Magic. New York: Louis Tannen, 1961,
pp. 23-26.
16 See e.g., supra note 13, p. 228; see also, Tamariz, Juan. Mnemonica:
Symphony in Mnemonic Major. Translated by Rafael Benatar. Seattle:
Hermetic Press, 2004, p. 264.
17Hugard, Jean, ed. Encyclopedia of Card Tricks. London: Faber & Faber,
1961, pp. 440-41.
18 Supra note 9.

14
keepsakes19) set up in the zippered compartment of a
LePaul-style wallet.20
In the presentation above, you will have noticed
that throughout the “selection” procedure you are
apparently shuffling the cards; in reality, you are executing
one Oeink Shuffle after another, using Gary Plants’
peerless technique21 for cover. To keep things simple, think
of the Oeink Shuffle as a Zarrow Shuffle 22 without any
cover cards. If you uppercut to the right, riffle the packets,
unweave, and then square up by bringing the right packet
back to the top, you have a full-deck control. 23 If, however,
you uppercut to the right and after the unweave you bring
the left packet to the top (the way a southpaw would
Zarrow or Oeink), the “shuffle” will have given the deck a
single cut.
In the present routine, all of your false shuffles
save the last one maintain the pack in your memorized
order from one to fifty-two. Once the full card has been
generated by the audience, make an estimated uppercut to
the right, aiming to cut a few cards too short. Assuming, as

19Supra note 9; see also Giobbi, Roberto. Card College. Vol. 5. Seattle:
Hermetic Press, 2003, p. 1375 and Vigil, Paul. Classic Fantastic. Dallas:
Dark Arts Press, p. 218.
20 Supra note 8 (I use a self-sealing “Bonsalope” by PropDog, but
LePaul’s secret tear works just as well.)
21See e.g., Minch, Stephen. Gary Plants on the Zarrow Shuffle. Seattle:
Hermetic Press, 2004, pp. 26-27.
22Cf. Zarrow, Herb. “Full Deck Control.” The New Phoenix, July 1957, p.
210; cf. also Marlo, Edward. The Shank Shuffle. Chicago: Self-published,
1972.
23Cf. e.g., Forte, Steve. “The Sky Shuffle.” Casino Game Protection. Las
Vegas: SLF Publishing, 2004, p. 82.

15
in the presentation above, the named card was the Four of
Spades (which is 37th in Aronson’s order 24), you would cut
about thirty cards to the right. As you riffle the cards
together, riffle peek25 the top card of the left packet; after
the unweave, bring the left packet to the top. This cuts the
deck and peeks the new top card all in one move.26
Convert the peeked card to its stack number, and now you
know how many cards down the target card is located. In
the presentation above, the estimated cut was thirty cards,
leaving the Four of Spades seventh from the top.
Pick up the deck and start dealing the cards face
up to the table from right to left, counting them as you go.
(In our example above, you would need to deal six cards
face up to bring the Four of Spades to the top of the pack
proper in your left hand.) Once you have the target card
on top, bring the right hand over the pack and execute
Vernon’s Topping the Deck 27 to palm the card in the right
hand. With the assistance of the right hand, turn the deck
face up, and then use the left hand to ribbon spread the
deck face up, starting on the previously dealt face-up cards
on the right and then spreading to the left.
While the audience is looking through the spread
to find the target card, load the palmed card into the

24 See e.g., Aronson, Simon. Bound to Please. Chicago: Self-published,

1994, p. 119.
25 Forte, Steve. Poker Protection. Las Vegas: SLF Publishing, 2006, pp.
138-39.
26 This excellent suggestion comes from Texas-based wizard John
Wilson.
27 Vernon, Dai. Select Secrets. New York: Max Holden, 1941, pp. 7-10; see
also Practical Card Palming. Performed by Bob White. Directed by Jared
Kopf. United States: Scapegrace Productions, 2005. DVD.

16
LePaul setup in your pocket. All that’s left to do is remove
the wallet, unwrap your correspondence, and hand the
sealed envelope to one of your participants so that she can
open it and find the prophetic card.

17
 Steal this Trick
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
— Koheleth 28

Many people believe that they could easily hold

down a job on the plagiarism desk. But if you think
you know what plagiarism is, you are making a very
large claim — the claim that you know originality
when you see it.
— Christopher Hitchens29

“When Newton was accused of stealing the law of

planetary motion from Robert Hooke and others, the
great scientist replied, ‘If I have seen farther it is by
standing on the shoulders of giants’ — which is funny
because that line was plagiarized from the poet George
Herbert. Or was it Bernard of Chartres? Or Henri de
Mondeville?”
The magician takes his bifold wallet from his
pocket and opens the bill compartment. He removes a bill,
a receipt, and a business card. Briefly displaying the
business card, he says, “On one of my cards I have written
some of my favorite sentences in the English language.
Apart from the facts that they happen to resonate and that

28 Ecclesiastes 1:9, King James Version.

29 Hitchens, Christopher. Unacknowledged Legislation. London: Verso,
2000, p. 237, 2000.

19
they show beautiful concision (each comprises only three
words), they have only one other thing in common: people
claim they can attribute them to their original authors.”
He puts the articles back into the bill compartment,
closes the wallet and places it on the table. The magician
reaches into his jacket pocket and comes out with an
orange Sharpie marker and a small spiral notepad. He
flips through the notepad, bypassing his grocery list and
notes-to-self, and finally comes to a blank page. He uncaps
the marker, jots something on the pad, folds the leaf of
paper and tears it off. He hands the folded slip to a man in
the front row.
“Is there really anything new under the sun? Let’s
try a simple experiment. Maybe we can say something
new. On that slip of paper, I’ve written the first word of
one of the three-word aphorisms from the back of my
business card. Please open it carefully so that only you can
see what I’ve written there. Look at the word and try not
to allow it to influence your next decision. Please say the
first adjective that comes into your mind.”
The man says, “Unfortunate.”
“A bit doleful, but a great choice,” says the
magician. “Unfortunate. I doubt anyone else came up with
that.”
On the next sheet of paper the magician writes
another word. He folds the page, tears it from the pad,
and hands it to another participant.
“Miss, on your slip of paper I have written the
second word of this old maxim. Read it without letting
anyone else see, but be wary of its influence. Allow a word
— a plural noun, by the way — to come to mind. What
noun are you thinking of ?”
The woman says, “Spiders.”

20
 “Spiders. Most fascinating! Thank you. And that
just popped into your head? . . . I doubt anyone else in the
room thought of that noun; you were, however, the only
person who read my slip of paper. We’ll see in a moment
what difference, if any, that made.”
The magician writes a word on the next slip, folds it
and tears it from the pad. He hands the slip to a third
participant and says, “Sir, the last word — a verb — is for
you. Read it, but try your best not to let it influence your
next thought. Please give me the verb that comes to mind.”
“Adore.”
“Really? Adore? Interesting choice. If we put these
three words together, the three of you have coined a new
maxim inspired by the bits and pieces of another:
‘Unfortunate spiders adore.’ How true! How universal!”
As the audience chuckles, the magician writes one
more thing and hands the pad to a fourth person.
“Will you please read out loud what I’ve written?”
She does: “Great artists steal.”
“You’ve heard it before, and had I simply read
that aloud and asked you to derive something new from it,
we certainly wouldn’t have arrived at ‘Unfortunate spiders
adore.’ Yet by splitting it up, the three of you have coined
a new terrifically terse truism, right? . . . Wrong!
‘Unfortunate spiders adore’ is all James Joyce. It’s from his
ouroboric opus, Finnegans Wake. The Wordsworth edition,
page 734. Here, look!”
The magician picks up his wallet and removes the
contents from the bill compartment, casually showing it
otherwise empty before he places the wallet, receipt, and
bill back on the table.
Reading from the list of quotations, he says,
“‘Love your enemies’ comes from Jesus, but shouldn’t he

21
have cited the Akkadian father who gave the same advice
to his son some two thousand years earlier?30 ‘Misery loves
company’ comes from the naturalist John Ray? Or is it
from Christopher Marlowe or Dominici de Gravina?31
‘Love is blind’ comes from Shakespeare’s 1596 play The
Merchant of Venice, of course. Or is it Chaucer who wrote
The Merchant’s Tale two hundred years before the bard was
old enough to dip his quill?32 And ‘Great artists steal’
comes from Picasso. Or was it T.S. Eliot?”33
He hands the card to one of his participants and
says, “Will you read the final quotation?”
“‘Unfortunate spiders adore’—James Joyce,
Finnegans Wake, 1939.”
The magicians smiles and says, “You can look it
up when you get home.”

***

“Steal this Trick” belongs to the ever-growing genus of

“Confabulation” routines, which are named after a famous

30Cf. Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27, King James Version with “The
Advice of an Akkadian Father to His Son, C. 2200 BCE.”
31 Cf. Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of the Life and Death of
Doctor Faustus. Scene V. Ca. 1585; cf. also Notes and Queries: A Medium of
Intercommunication for Literary Men, General Readers, Etc. Vol. 2. Ninth.
London: John C. Francis, 1898, p. 66 (citing “Dominicus de Gravina”).
32Cf. Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Act 2, Scene 6. Ca.
1596 with Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Merchant’s Tale. Ca. 1400.
33 Cf. TEDTalks: Embrace the Remix. Performed by Kirby Ferguson. June
2012 (showing a 1996 video of Steve Jobs attributing the quote to
Picasso) with Eliot, T.S. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism.
London: Methuen, 1972.

22
prediction effect by Alan Shaxon.34 The pedigree is long; it
branches with countless species and subspecies; and there
can be no doubt that many of magic’s greatest creators
have contributed to the line. My favorite variations come
from the minds of Stewart James,35 Al Koran,36 James T.
Deacy, 37 Ron Wilson,38 T.A. Waters, 39 Paul Vigil,40 and
John Lovick. 41 But there are so many more.
To perform this effect you will need the following
props: two blank-backed business cards, two identical

34See e.g., Shaxon, Alan, Scott Penrose, and Stephen Short. Alan Shaxon:
The Sophisticated Sorcerer. United Kingdom: Full Moon Magic Books,
2014.
35 James, Stewart. “Two Fearless Feats.” In The Jinx, 51-100 by
Theodore Annemann. New York: Louis Tannen, 1964, pp. 601-02
(using double-writing, a circular cardboard key tag, a coin slide and a
ball of wool).
36 Koran, Al. “The Gold Medallion.” In Al Koran’s Professional
Presentations edited by Hugh Miller. Devon: Supreme Magic, 1968, pp.
9-15.
37 Deacy, James T. “Just an Echo.” In Practical Mental Effects by
Theodore Annemann. New York: Holden’s Magic Shops, 1944, pp.
159-62 (using a clever double pencil to write on the card and prediction
slip simultaneously).
38 Wilson, Ron. “Confabulous!” In The Uncanny Scot by Richard
Kaufman. Washington, D.C.: Kaufman & Greenberg, 1987.
39Waters, T.A. “Backdate.” In Mind, Myth & Magick. Seattle: Hermetic
Press, 1993, pp. 665-68.
Vigil, Paul. “Update.” In Classic Fantastic edited by Jared Kopf. Dallas:
40

Dark Arts Press, 2014, pp. 139-88.

41 Jack, Handsome. “Vainfabulation.” In The Performance Pieces &
Divertissements of the Famous Handsome Jack, etc. annotated by John Lovick.
Chicago: Squash Publishing, 2016, pp. 175-89.

23
banknotes, two identical receipts, a ShoGun Wallet, 42 a
spiral-bound ruled notepad with the thickest paper you
can find, an orange washable marker, and an orange
gaffed Sharpie that clandestinely writes in ballpoint pen.43
The Sharpie is gaffed as follows. Pull the Sharpie
apart and remove the ink cartridge and marker tip. Insert
the ink cartridge from a retractable ballpoint pen into the
base of the Sharpie and reassemble the marker. If the
cartridge is too long, you’ll need to trim it slightly. If it’s
too short, you’ll need to insert a stopper of some kind in
the base of the Sharpie. John Lovick, whose gaffed
Sharpie is practically identical to this one, suggests using a
trimmed piece off the discarded Sharpie ink cartridge.44
(I’ll admit, I just push in a wad of paper towel.) The last
step is to take a bit of burnt orange air-hardening
modeling clay and sculpt a false Sharpie nib around the
tip of the ballpoint cartridge. After it dries (it takes about
24 hours), you can use an emery board to shape it and
remove any shine. The results: a gaffed marker that can
withstand scrutiny even in close-up performances.
In ballpoint ink fill out one of the business cards
with four of your favorite three-word phrases. (My theme
is rather pretentiously framed around originality and
plagiarism, so the four quotations above serve my purposes

42 Gardner, Elbert. “ShoGun Wallet” manufactured by Al Cohen.

43 Cf. supra note 41, p. 184 (describing a practically identical marker;
neither of us knows if we are the first to gaff a Sharpie in this way); cf.
also Thompson, John. Polished Polish Prestidigitation.San Francisco: Busby-
Corin, 1981, pp. 23-28 (citing Balducci, Ed. “Twin Prediction Miracle.”
In The New Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mentalism, Vol. 2 edited by Burling
“Volta” Hull. Calgary: Micky Hades Enterprises, 1973, pp. 20-21; cf.
also Fisher, Cody. “Comedy Confabulation.” 2010.
44 Supra note 41, p. 184.

24
nicely.) Leave room at the bottom for a fifth quotation,
filling out the citation to “James Joyce, Finnegans Wake,
1939.” Fill out the second card with the same four
quotations, but in the fifth slot fill in something like “Grace
before Glutton.”45
Place the second business card into one of the bill
compartments of your ShoGun Wallet along with one of
the bills and one of the receipts. Place the second bill and
second receipt into the other bill compartment.
Prepare the notepad by filling the first few pages
with notes, grocery lists, etc. in orange washable marker.
On the page following your notes, write the word great in
orange just below center. Fold the bottom quarter of this
leaf up so that its long edge goes just beyond what you’ve
written, covering the text completely and making sure you
line up any preprinted lines.

You’ve probably noticed that washable marker is

used rather than Sharpie because it has less of a chance of

45 Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2012, p. 7.

25
bleeding through; if the paper is thick enough, however, this
shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Flip to the next page and write the word artists.
Flip to the next page and write the word steal. And, finally,
flip to the next page and write the entire phrase, Great
artists steal.
Place the first business card (the one with the
blank spot for the final entry) on the page containing the
entire phrase, and then close the pad. I used to affix the
card with a bit of magicians wax, but I’ve since found this
unnecessary: with practice, a bit of pressure with the left
thumb during the routine keeps it roughly in place. Put the
wallet in your right hip pocket. Place the gaffed Sharpie in
your left jacket pocket. Finally, place the notepad in your
shirt pocket spiral-side down so that the business card
doesn’t fall out.

***

Take out the wallet and remove the bill, receipt, and filled-
out business card from the appropriate compartment.
Display the business card long enough to allow the
audience to see that a list is written on it but not long
enough for them to read anything. Replace the three
articles, close the wallet, and then set it on the table so that
the side without a business card is facing left.
Remove the notepad from your shirt pocket and
open it, being careful not to let the business card fall out.
Flip through the pages until you come to the folded sheet.
As you flip through the pages, your orange notes and
grocery lists will flash by. The audience won’t really notice,

26
but they will begin to become immersed in the gestalt. 46 I
got this tip from Rob Domenech who pointed out that the
notebook should appear to be something you use for
things other than this trick. It turns out that Derek
DelGaudio gave a similar recommendation to John Lovick
for his “Vainfabulation.”47
Once you reach the folded page, grip the pad so
that your left second and third fingers cover the fold’s
corners on the right; press your left thumb across the
folded quarter’s bottom edge so that it is pinned flush
against the pad. As you reach into your left pocket to
remove the pen, slightly lower your left hand and briefly
expose the face of the notepad: it will appear to be blank,
further reinforcing the false picture you’re creating.

46See e.g., Giobbi, Roberto. Card College. Vol. 2. Seattle: Hermetic Press,
1996, p. 499.
47 Cf. supra note 41, p. 184, note 8 (Derek Delgaudio recommending a
similar subtlety).

27
 Remove the cap and place it on back of the
marker. Pretend to jot down the first word by pressing your
fingernail agains the pad as you apparently move the pen
across the paper. Next, pretend to make a quarter fold
upward by grabbing the bottom edge of the next page
down and then releasing it as you make a folding action.
Fold the what remains of the top page in half, tear it from
the pad and hand it to the first participant. From now on,
you must necktie the pad to prevent anyone from seeing
what is already written on the next few pages.
Once you’ve memorized the first person’s
response, repeat the jotting and tearing process for the
next two participants, each time remembering their
responses. You will now have come to the business card,
which you must pin in place with your left thumb. In the
blank slot, write the three word sentence created by the
participants. As you take the pad in the right hand (which
also continues to hold the marker), Loewy Palm48 the
business card into your left hand.
Hand the notepad to one of the participants and
have her read aloud what is printed there. As she’s reading,
recap the marker, being careful not to flash the palmed
card. Use the dirty left hand to open the jacket slightly and
return the marker to your inside jacket pocket.
Pick up the wallet and open it so that your left
hand has access to the proper bill compartment. Reach in
the with your left hand and remove the receipt and bill,
allowing the compartment to be seen empty before you set

48 See e.g., Practical Card Palming. Performed by Bob White. Directed by

Jared Kopf. United States: Scapegrace Productions, 2005. DVD.

28
the wallet down.49 Allow the business card to shift out of
palm position and come into view as you place the bill and
receipt down next to the wallet. 50
All that’s left to do is to read the first four
quotations and then have a participant read the final entry
aloud. The chance of anyone knowing that the phrase
doesn’t appear anywhere among the morass of puns and
multi-lingual neologisms in Joyce’s novel is as remote as
anyone knowing that there is no page 734 in the
Wordsworth edition.

49 Cf. Corinda, Tony. Step 4 of Thirteen Steps to Mentalism: Predictions.

London: Corinda’s Magic Studio, 1958, p. 92.
50Cf. Live in London. Performed by Jamy Ian Swiss. United States, 2004.
DVD (use of the bill and receipt is inspired by Swiss’s Hershey’s Kisses
subtlety in “Kiss of the Big Apple”).

29
 The Oneiromancer’s Index

I told this unto the magicians; but there was none

that could declare it to me.
— Pharaoh51

It is profitable — indeed, not only profitable but

necessary — for the dreamer as well as the person
who is interpreting that the dream interpreter know
the dreamer's identity, occupation, birth, financial
status, state of health, and age. Also, the nature of
the dream itself must be examined accurately,
for . . . the outcome is altered by the least addition
or omission, so that if anyone fails to abide by this,
he must blame himself rather than us if he goes
wrong.
— Artemidorus Daldianus52

“I can trace my lineage to a man who claimed to be able

to trace his lineage back to Joseph, the Pharaoh’s
interpreter of dreams. I suffered from a spell of bad
dreams a number of years ago; and so — spurred by my
ancestor’s dubious claim — I began to study the ancient
craft of oneiromancy. By show of hands, how many
people can remember their nightmares?”
Most of the people raise their hands.

51 Genesis 41:24, King James Version.

52 Artemidorus. “Artemidorus: On the Interpretation of Dreams
(Oneirocritica).” http://www.attalus.org/translate/artemidorus.html.

31
 “I appreciate your sincerity. I’d like to interpret a
few of these visions for you. I promise to do so with tact
and discretion. I suggest we keep things as private as
possible.”
The magician reaches into his pocket and removes
a stack of business cards and a handful of golf pencils.
“Time doesn’t permit me to interpret all your
dreams tonight, I’m afraid. We’ll have to limit this to a few
of you.”
He hands a card and a pencil to four people who
indicate they’re keen to participate and then places the
remaining cards and pencils back into his pocket.
“On the blank sides of your cards please write
down a short description of a nightmare you’ve had. It
could be a recent nightmare, or one you had when you
were a child. I’ll ask those of you behind our dreamers
here not to peek at what they’re writing. As they fill out
their cards, allow me to make this disclaimer. The
following procedure has not been approved by any
regulatory body or advisory board. I am not a licensed
therapist or psychologist. But I am a witchdoctor. And
apparently, in this country, a witchdoctor can say whatever
the hell he wants.”
Once they have finished, he tells them to keep
their pencils and pass their cards to the participant closest
to the performer. He instructs her to mix the cards so that
she even she doesn’t where her card is.
He takes the cards from her, pushes off the first
card and reads it silently: I fall off a ladder. Everything’s in slow
motion. When I hit the ground I wake up sweating. He tosses the
other cards to the table and directs his attention to the
middle-aged man in the tweed jacket.

32
 “Sir, may I ask you for your name and what you
do for a living?”
“I’m James,” he says. “I’m an attorney. Probate.”
“Thank you, James. I have a feeling that a time or
two this dream has caused you to wake suddenly. It’s
usually very early in the morning. Still dark out. This type
of dream usually indicates anxiety caused by some
external force — one that seems to take all control away
from you. You’re a strong person, capable of handling
people when they’re at their worst and helping to bring the
best out in them. But sometimes you take on other
people’s burdens without asking for any help, and this
usually comes at a sacrifice of your own ambitions. This
isn’t out of pride. It’s out of confidence and the desire to
just get things accomplished efficiently and swiftly, but
your dream is telling you to let people be there to catch
you when you need them to. Does that make sense?”
The magician hands him the card.
James, a bit shaken, looks at the card. The nightmare
belongs to him. “Yes,” he says. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
The magician reaches for the next card but then
changes his mind. Instead, he reaches into his jacket
pocket and removes his wallet. He opens the zippered
compartment and removes a stack of his correspondence
and a few photos, all wrapped in a rubber band. He sorts
through the mail until he comes to a small envelope
addressed to whom it may concern.
He hands the envelope to one of the three
remaining participants and says, “Miss, I think this is
meant for you. Please hold on to it. I’ll check back in a
moment.”

33
 He repeats the reading process with the next two
cards, each time delivering an eerily accurate
interpretation and correctly identifying to whom the
dream belongs. Only one card remains.
“We know whose card this is by process of
elimination. It’s yours. But I wanted to try something far
more ambitious with you anyway, miss. We’ve never met
before. You’ve never told me your dream. The only person
who knows the dream on that card is you. However, I
thought I might meet you. I wasn’t sure it would be tonight,
but now I’m certain. You see, a few nights ago I sat in the
darkness of my study, and by the light of a single candle, I
stared into a bowl of water. I dropped a single bead of ink
into the water and watched. I decoded the droplet’s dynamic
dance and wrote a letter. I sent it to you, care of yours truly of
course, because I didn’t know where you’d be.”
“Open the envelope,” he says.
She opens the envelope and removes the enclosed
letter. As she reads it, her crescent smile waxes like the moon.
“You don’t need this nightmare anymore,” says
the magician. “It’s taught you everything you need to
know. Pick up the card. Now, tear it to shreds.”
The magician takes the envelope and has her drop
the pieces inside.
He hands it to her and says, “Take this home and
bury it.”

***

In the first volume of Psychological Subtleties, Banachek includes

a short chapter called “Subtle Dreams.” The opening lines
formed the basis of a trick I’ve done since my freshman
year of high school: “When asked to think of a nightmare,

34
most women will tell you they dreamed of being chased,
while most men have nightmares of falling.”53
For years, all I did was carry a double envelope
(grotesquely made of two envelopes glued back to back).
One contained a card that read, “Next time pack a
parachute”; the other contained a card that read, “Run
faster.” Basically, after a few card tricks, I would ask a
spectator to tell me one of his or her nightmares; if it hit, I
opened the correct side of the envelope to reveal my
predictive advice. If it didn’t, I’d say something like, “Very
interesting . . .” and try to weave whatever was said into
my next paltry effect. It played pretty well, I suppose. But
what struck me the most was how often it did hit.
I found, however, that the responses weren’t as
gender-based as Banachek asserted, at least not for me. I
also started to catalog the misses and soon realized that
there are really only about a dozen nightmare themes that
ever come up at all. Banachek was right about how
common falling and being chased were, but others came
up all the time too — often enough for the seed for this
routine to plant itself in my mind and grow over the years.
I’ve played with many mechanical methods, and
I’ll offer several suggestions here. But I won’t explain them
in too much detail because they are well-known standards
of mentalism.
The pseudo-psychometric 54 method above relies
on a masterpiece of modern mentalism: Max Maven’s

53 Banachek. Psychological Subtleties. Houston: Magic Inspirations, 1998,

p. 88.
See Annemann, Theodore. Practical Mental Effects. New York: Holden’s
54

Magic Shops, 1944, p. 150-51.

35
“Desire.”55 Maven’s method of peeking gives you all the
time in the world to get the last person’s information. As
good as Larry Becker’s peek from “Sneak Thief ”56 is for a
drawing or a single word, it simply won’t work as well
here. Maven’s is the peek to use.
I also use a pocket index57 loaded with the eight
letters, one for each of the commonest nightmares I’ve
encountered (explained below). This is in my right trouser
pocket, and I palm the appropriate letter as I’m delivering
the first reading so that I can load it into the LePaul
envelope for the final participant.
Although it’s not portrayed in the foregoing
presentation, I occasionally use the other feature of
Maven’s routine to add a small, but powerful effect for the
last participant. Above the recipient-address portion of the
envelope I occasionally will add a personalized prediction
as in Bruce Bernstein’s brilliant “Croisset Affair,”58
addressing the letter “c/o Jared Kopf.” If I’m feeling
lucky, I pick my mark beforehand and write a very detailed
prediction, hoping she will agree to participate; otherwise,
I write a more generic prediction and hope to find
someone who fits closely. Then, I simply rely on the

55 Maven, Max. Prism: The Color Series of Mentalism. Seattle: Hermetic

Press, 2005, pp. 7-11.
56 See e.g., Becker, Larry. Stunners Plus! Carefree: Aplar Publishing, 2002,
p. 58; see also Nyman, Andy. Bulletproof. Los Angeles: Miracle Factory,
2010, pp. 35-37.
57 See e.g., supra note 12.
58 Bernstein, Bruce. Unreal. Chicago: Squash Publishing, 2012, pp.
141-44.

36
“Living and Dead”59 aspect of Maven’s routine to steer
her card to the peek position.
I used to have ten letters in the index but found
there was enough thematic overlap to squeeze the set
down to eight. These are the eight nightmares I use and
their basic interpretations, which I cobbled together from
Max Maven’s Book of Fortune Telling (a marvelously useful
tome written for a general readership), The Dream Dictionary
from A to Z by the “psychic” Theresa Cheung, and an
article on the “intuitive counselor” Diane Brandon.60

(1) BEING CHASED: anxiety over lost time and

unfinished business
(2) FALLING: loss of control, feeling overburdened
or helpless
(3) D ROWNING , B URIED , C ONFINED : feeling
trapped or stagnant
(4) FAILING: feeling inadequate or unprepared
(5) INJURY, SICKNESS, OR DEATH: guilt for having
a happy life or fear that happiness is only
temporary
(6) BEING NAKED: anxiety over being caught or
found-out, low confidence, fear of scrutiny
(7) B E I N G L O S T O R L O S I N G S O M E T H I N G :
uncertainty of the future; fear that plans will fall
through
(8) TEETH FALLING OUT: fear of aging and
mortality and of other people’s perception of
oneself

59 See e.g., supra note 12, pp. 150-51 and 58-59.

60 Maven, Max. Max Maven's Book of Fortunetelling. New York: Prentice
Hall General Reference, 1992, pp. 198-201; Cheung, Theresa. The
Dream Dictionary from A to Z. London: Harper Element, 2006; Spector,
Dina. “The 10 Most Common Nightmares Interpreted.” Business Insider,
December 7, 2012. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-nightmares-
mean-2012-12?op=1.

37
 To create an endless supply of letters, I wrote one
master paragraph that opens each letter no matter what
the peeked nightmare turns out to be. I scanned this
document and created a master half-letter-size image file. I
then wrote a reading for each of the eight nightmares,
scanned those, and pasted each one under the paragraph
in the master image, saving a new file each time. Now I
can print these whenever I need to, resulting in a note that
really appears to be handwritten. When folded into
eighths, the letters are the perfect size for palming.
They are also the perfect size and thickness for
setting up the index in a ShoGun Wallet, which is what I
use in close-up and informal performance situations. In
one bill compartment place a single folded letter along
with a few banknotes. In the other bill compartment place
four folded letters on one end of the bifold and three on
the other; place a banknote between these to separate
them two-and-two on one end and two-and-one on the
other. As the participants fill out their cards, remove the
single letter and bills from their side of the wallet, casually
showing the bill compartment as otherwise empty. Return
the bills as if you never meant to remove them, and place
the wallet down. Display the letter and say, “This may be
important later; then again, maybe not.” Pick up the
wallet and open it the opposite way so that you can place
the letter next to the unpaired one. Now all of your letters
are on the same side in the order that you have them
memorized. Once you get your peek, you know which of
the letters, if any, to remove.
This brings up an important question. What
should you do if you peek and none of your prediction
letters really match? In the case of the formal presentation
above, you simply end the way Maven originally ended

38
“Desire”: with an impossible feat of clairvoyance or
telepathy. In the close-up situation, end the very same way;
and if someone asks about the letter, say, “I thought it was
meant for you, but I was wrong: You’re not ready.”

39
 ***

Here are a few other thoughts on this routine that you

might find useful. For stage shows, I pass out cards to
twenty people or more, asking all of them to jot down a
nightmare. Then, relying on Bruce Bernstein’s
“Emergency Mentalism”61 (only in real time rather than
pre-show), I gain access to the marked cards. I recommend
incorporating Barrie Richardson’s brilliant “Rounders”
principle62 here in lieu of the wedgies Bernstein describes.
If you want to make this effect as powerful as
possible, I suggest you not only study the meanings of the
dreams, but also the reading systems of Jerome Finley,63
Luke Jermay,64 George Anderson,65 and Richard
Webster. 66 These will give you a solid foundation to build
your readings on.
Luke Jermay also has an excellent routine called
“Connected”67 that is easily adapted to the premise of
“The Oneiromancer’s Index.” Like Maven’s technique in
“Desire,” Jermay’s peek is covered long enough for you to
get all the information without any suspicion. I suggest

61 Supra note 58, pp. 32-33.

62 Richardson, Barrie. Act Two: Theater of the Mind. Seattle: Hermetic
Press, 2005, pp. 48-51.
63 E.g., Finley, Jerome. Guerilla Q&A. Self-published, 2008.
64Jermay's Mind. Performed by Luke Jermay. United States: Vanishing
Inc., 2015. DVD.
65 Anderson, George B. Dynamite Mentalism. Chicago: Magic Inc., 1979.
66Webster, Richard. Psychometry From A to Z. Auckland: Brookfield Press,
1987.
67 See supra note 64.

40
reframing the basic theme slightly by telling the four people
to write down their most beautiful dreams and the main
participant to write her most terrifying nightmare. This
creates a “Living and Dead” scenario, which culminates
with the ritualistic destruction of the final, dirty envelope.
Finally, here’s an impromptu marking system 68 for
the “Pseudo-Psychometry” side of things. It will allow you
to borrow four business cards and, in a single crimping
action, mark the cards in four different places.
Let’s assume that when the person hands you his
business cards, he has them oriented the same way (i.e., all
the cards are print-side up, blank-side down, with all the
text facing rightward); even if they are haphazard, it takes
little effort to get them oriented properly.
Holding the cards in dealing position, push off the
top two business cards and hold them in your right
fingertips so that you can read the information to yourself.

Say, “Thank you, sir. Do you mind if I pass these

out to a few people? You might get some business out of
your investment in this experiment.” As you say this,

68 Kopf, Jared. Behind Your Forehead. Dallas: Legerdemain Press, 2013.

41
casually turn the cards in your right hand over end for end,
placing them face up onto the cards in the left hand.

Direct your attention to the rest of the crowd and

say, “In a moment I’m going to hand these cards and some
pencils to four of you, and I’d like you to write down a
nightmare.” Spread the cards and take the top two blank-
side-up cards away in your right hand. With your right
forefinger, point to the printing on the top card in the left
hand, and say, “Don’t write on this side, obviously.”

Bring the cards back together in a small spread

and swap the positions of the two center cards. Separate
the hands, again taking two cards in each hand.

42
Immediately, repeat the pointing action and say, “Use this
side.”

Now, as the hands come back together, look at the

audience and say, “Makes sense, right?” The moment they
lock eyes with you, casually flip the two cards in the right
hand over onto the cards in the left hand as if turning the
page of a book. This is not a hidden action, but it isn’t an
important action either.

With your right fingertips, take the cards at the

lower right corner, thumb on top, first and second fingers
below. All you have to do now is squeeze very slightly, and
you will place a slight crimp or bow in each card.

43


I put the crimp in as I reach into my pocket with

my left hand so that I can remove the pencils. This natural
misdirection will cover any tension in the right fingertips as I
crimp the cards.
Hand the cards out in order from the top down,
starting with someone on your right and ending with
someone on your left. The last card will be face down,
giving you a sense of orientation. All you have to do is note
where the crimp is on that last card; it will tell you how the
other cards are marked because, if you’re looking at the
once-blank sides, the crimps run clockwise from the noted
crimp. Now, match each nightmare to the corresponding
participant in a worldview-shattering fashion and predict
the last one sight unseen, which is to say, all your real work
is still ahead of you.

44