Prediction - The Secrets of Mentalists.

Prediction can be considered a divinatory art, a stage art, or a form of entertainment that consists of announcing an event before it has occurred. To make a prediction is to anticipate the future. Today, according to polling institutes, nearly ten million French people believe in predictions and consult horoscopes or fortune-telling columns every day. This phenomenon may be called the “well effect,” meaning that the broader a statement is, the more people who hear it can recognize themselves in it and identify with it. This persuasive power is also known as the “Barnum effect.”

Many people use predictions to offer their followers revelations, either to dazzle them or to help them prepare for their future.

Kira Radinsky, a young 28-year-old Israeli woman, is a special case. She does not read the future or the stars, but the archives of current events. Her prediction technique consists of analyzing billions of mathematical data points drawn from past events. Thus, without entering into a “trance,” she invented software capable of predicting the arrival of political, health, or social crises. She simply codified, through mathematical probabilities and associations of factors, the idea that certain events follow repetitive patterns and lead to the same consequences. For example, poverty, drought, and storms can cause cholera epidemics in various Third World countries.

Some analysts manage to predict new market trends or political changes. Warren Buffett, the American investor and one of the richest men in the world, has been called an “oracle” because of his wise stock-market investments. Scientists, meanwhile, use cutting-edge equipment and spend astronomical sums to make various forecasts: what consequences will pollution have for the Earth, what will the weather be like tomorrow in your region, and so on. The American writer Nate Silver uses statistics to make predictions about almost everything, even American presidential elections!

Prediction is mentalism’s favorite domain, the idea being to persuade you that it is possible to foresee events or choices that we believe to be free. Obviously, once again, this is a matter of mental manipulation. There are many techniques that we will study and put into practice in order to create this type of mental illusion. For the spectator, the mentalist makes a prediction, seals it in an envelope, retrieves it at the agreed moment—in an atmosphere of great mystery—compares it with recent events, and makes his revelation. To do this, he must master his intuition and clairvoyance, as well as the medium he uses to guide the person chosen for the experiment, a medium that reveals to him the symbols to be interpreted. A false interpretation leads to a false prediction: announcing future events certainly grants a certain prestige, but above all, it carries great responsibility.

Answers Without Thinking

Most spectators give the same answers when they are not given time to think:

Playing card? Queen of hearts, often also the ace of spades.
Flower? Rose, sometimes tulip.
Number from 1 to 10? 7.
European country? Italy, sometimes Spain.
Animal? Elephant, along with dog and cat, of course.
Color? Red.
Tool? Hammer, sometimes screwdriver.
Bird? Eagle.

The mentalist will obviously know how to take advantage of these different probabilities...

Here are a few examples of simple predictions performed during mentalism shows:

With Objects

The operation is performed with ten objects and two spectators. The mentalist takes an envelope from his pocket in which he has written a prediction. He then asks each spectator to eliminate the objects one after another according to their own choice. In the end, only one object remains on the table.

The prediction in the envelope is opened and... miracle: it is the very same object!

At a Horse Race

The mentalist, present at the racecourse, makes a prediction that is placed in a chest suspended in full view of everyone. At the end of the race, the chest is lowered, and inside it, sealed in a transparent cylinder, is a handwritten parchment containing... the finishing order of the race.

Too bad the mentalist had not bet on the horses’ finishing order!

And there are countless other experiments on the theme of prediction, limited only by your own imagination, such as the ones you are now going to try to perform...