12/27/2023 0 Comments Docc hilford confidence mannot if you are seeking to be “more” than some guy doing tricks. The IMAGE is what’s important and when it comes to Mentalism, you really don’t get to enjoy downtime. This can range from taking credit for someone’s watch stopping or other peculiar happenings when we are around to our work with billets, swamis, benders, and more. More so, we are willing to do whatever it takes to sustain our biggest of all illusions – the claim of who & what we are. as Stephan Minch pointed out long ago, a true mentalists has one foot embedded in the Theater with the other firmly planted in the world of the confidence artist. Because of the brain washing we are given when it comes to charlatan antics we feel “dirty” and worse, so as to escape this psychologically empowered monkey on our back, we start viewing what we do as being a “trick” which restores the more innocent idea behind what we are doing. Guilt comes because we know we are about to cheat our butts off in order to create a seeming miracle. Magicians place importance onto the slip because of guilt, that’s it (outside the fear of doing the switch, copping the read and how to end up clean which is more fear based). I believe it was Dunninger that suggested we ask ourselves “What would a real mind reader/ psychic do”? and in the case of billets, they are quite nonchalant and look at them for what they are a slip of paper someone wrote something on – it’s innocent and means NOTHING. IGNORE IT!Just as you learn to ignore the hand that has the vanished object and focus on the empty hand that mimes the action of taking it, so with billets you must learn to no make them a big deal in your own head. Needless to say, someone working outside the New Age/Psychic Entertainer approach will have it a bit tougher explaining away such things but that is why so many follow the primary rule of billet work. In this explanation we find the answer to our first quandary – why would people write something down? The answer being that it’s what has been done for over a century from within the shut-eye world. Though rare you will still find Billet Readers being advertised as such, from that particular culture, so don’t fear calling these little “love pillows” (the original meaning from the “French” according to Bob Cassidy, because they were used in Victorian times as a way for lovers to pass affectionate thoughts to one another especially in cases of forbidden love.) the bigger issue being magician’s guiltĬontrary to the belief put forth in the magic community the word “Billet” is a legit term used in the Spiritualist world to refer to a small slip of paper upon which a client writes the gist of their question. This would seem one of the biggest issues people have when it comes to billet work and for a few reasons the least of which is the action of having someone write a question or whatever, on a small card or slip of paper.
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