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Never Bet The Devil Your Head Francis Girola
Copyright 2017
Francis Girola, All Rights Reserved
Published by Arcane Arts Limited All legal owners in possession of an original copy of this manuscript have the right to perform this effect, presentation and method in all performance settings. This publication may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part without the specific permission of the author. #
Table of Contents
Introduction.........................................................4 Script....................................................................6 Explanations.......................................................11 Credits................................................................16 Final Words........................................................18
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Introduction
Bonjour ! First and foremost, thank you very much for purchasing this effect. I hope that you will enjoy what you have received and that you will incorporate this material into your own repertoire. As you are about to discover, the following routine belongs to the realm of Bizarre Magick. It is a somewhat dark piece of storytelling that finds its roots in mentalism. Although the effect can be adapted to different performance settings, this is not meant to be the next best trick to do at your regular walk-around gig. It is better suited for quiet or intimate environments where you can easily set the scene for an immersive, dramatic experience for your participant. From a methodological point of view, the bare bones of the effect are rather simple. Nevertheless, its true power relies on your ability to sell the background story that underpins the entire routine. In this regard, I have provided you with the complete and detailed script. Please bear in mind that you do not necessarily have to perform it word for word or in such a theatrical way. What is essential is for you to get the gist of the narrative so that all the parts combine seamlessly. I originally developed this routine about three or four years ago as a variation of an effect by Docc Hilford. Since then, the presentation and storyline have gone through several modifications. Yet, the core has remained unchanged.
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I must admit I was rather proud of my discovery until a friend of mine told me that some elements were similar to something Paul Brook had published several years before. Gutted! Had I unknowingly reinvented the wheel? So I immediately tracked down that publication and found out that the two routines did have a few things in common method-wise. Therefore, I would like to give very special thanks to Paul Brook for giving me his permission to share with you my handling of this effect. The owners of his original publication will be able to appreciate the fact that the following presentation is drastically different, and so is the overall selection process. Consequently, you can feel free to incorporate some parts of this manuscript into Paul’s routine and vice versa. All the details will be covered in the explanations. But, for now, I will let you have a look at the performance script so that you can fully understand what the routine is about. I will see you on the other side…
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Script
The performer starts the routine by calling attention to his left hand. His sleeves are rolled up and he says that his closed fist contains an object that will prove to be of importance later on. He then goes on to tell the story of a strange encounter that took place some time ago:
Once upon a dreary midnight, I found myself alighting from a deserted train. I was at my local railway station, equally empty of commuters. I walked across the bare platform, headed through the exit and ventured out into the bleak, damp streets of my neighbourhood. As I pursued my way home and reached the crossroad junction of Cathcart Road and Dixon Avenue, I saw a tall dark figure standing on the opposite pavement. It was a man, all clad in black against the pale yellow light cast by a single rusted lamppost. Suddenly, he motioned me to come to him, which I bizarrely felt compelled to do. “Good evening, sir!” He said as the light gradually revealed his shadowed face. This Thi s man was not familiar to me nevertheless I had the th e impression we had met before. He went on: “My name is Mercury and I am sort of a genie. I’m in the business of granting wishes. Play a simple game with me and if you win, you can have absolutely anything you desire. I’ll just ask for a small fee in exchange.”
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None of this made any sense at the time and many thoughts were going through my head. But, in all honesty, I was mostly thinking about all the things I was craving for. And if that man was really what he claimed to be, what harm could there possibly be in playing the game? “You’ll die if you do, you’ll die if you don’t!” I thought. So I foolishly accepted his proposition. “Perfect! For this, we shall use my very favourite token: money, the root of all evil,” he said with a disturbingly wry smile. He then placed three coins on the table: a penny, a 10p and a pound. A volunteer is asked to merely imagine those three coins placed in front of them and to follow the instructions.
“With your non-dominant hand, pick up any which one you want. Now, make a wish as you throw the coin over your shoulder for good luck, just like at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Personally, I am not one for lowly superstitions but, as you are playing against me, you had better take all the help that you can get!” He laughed sarcastically. It was at that point that I felt a dreadful sense of foreboding as I realised I was already engaged in the man’s game. And I did not even know precisely what was at stake. He went on: “Now, have a look at that coin you just tossed behind you. Which side is showing, heads or tails? Feel free to change its orientation if you want.” That same question is also addressed to the volunteer, who now reveals for the first time the identity of their imaginary selection as well as what side of the coin they can visualise facing upwards. The emphasis is placed on the fact that the volunteer should follow their first instinct. By way of example, let us say the spectator chose the 10p coin and they decided it is tails side up.
Really? What a weird coincidence! Believe it or not, I too had chosen the 10p coin. Yet mine landed head side up instead. And when I turned back, the genie’s expression suddenly changed. His initial cheerful look, albeit slightly cynical, turned into a serious and penetrating gaze with sinister undertones. He then brought my attention to his right rig ht fist that (
had remained closed the entire time but which I had barely noticed up until then, as I had been far too busy thinking about the one wish I was so eager to have granted. All of a sudden, this whole game started to make sense. The man explained that it had not been based on chance in any way but, above all, decision-making. You see it had all started back when I willingly chose to participate in the first place, and I willingly chose the 10p coin over the others, and I willingly chose chose the tails side up. Amongst all the possible combinations, I am the one who seemingly controlled all the possible outcomes. “I’m all about freewill, the root of all sins,” he smirked. “What you have to do in order to win is to simply find the identical match to the coin I have kept in my hand from the outset.” Palm facing upwards, he then slowly opened up his fist to gradually let the silvery glimmer of a 10p coin peer through his parted fingers. “I won!” I gloated. “I chose the right coin! I won!” “Actually, you didn’t!” He giggled. “You were close, but not quite accurate. You see, you did choose the correct the denomination but if you look attentively you will realise that my coin is head side up. It doesn’t match, you’ve lost!” “Wait a minute!” I objected. “This game is rigged! How do I know you did not just control which side you wanted to show through some sleight-ofhand?” “Yes, I’ve been known to be a bit of a trickster at times. Never take anything at face value when gambling with a stranger. But you should give me my due and acknowledge that I did say you had to find an identical match, which clearly isn’t the case here. You see, the devil is in the detail.” It is at that precise moment that it all dawned on me. That man was no genie! “I know you… Mercury…” I stuttered. “You are…” “Oh, I’ve been given many names throughout the years: Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles… you can call me however you wish. But here’s the )
situation: you took my bet; you must now accept the outcome. If you remember correctly, I did tell you that there was a price to pay to play the game. Just as there are two sides to every coin, a head and a tail, every game has a prize and forfeit, every person has a body and a soul… and now yours belong to me!” He abruptly clenched my shoulder as his serious face suddenly turned into a distorted grimace. I vainly tried to escape but I was trapped in his embrace, as if restrained by ghostly chains. His lustrous eyes gleamed with cold fire in the stinging glow of the sickle moon. The stars radiated the sky with the searing incendiary glare of deathly constellations. The shadows suddenly slithered behind the columned houses as the earth quaked and the ground tore itself open to reveal the scorching blaze of hellish flames. I helplessly stood there in speechless agony amongst the deafening roar of the fiery tempest raging beneath my feet. Weak and defenceless in the cacophonous chaos of this fearful storm, I was at the mercy of my demonic abductor as he threw me into the proverbial inferno and I witnessed with terror my own descent into the burning abyss. And then… I woke up. Yes, it took me a few seconds to realise it, but none of that had actually happened. It had been nothing but a dream. Or rather a nightmare. And as scary as it had been a few seconds earlier, the preceding horror and panic had now been replaced by an even stronger sense of relief. In a way, I could not help but feel a little bit silly about that experience and the whole genie-devil nonsense. I then turned on the light to see what time it was. The wall clock said 3 a.m. And as I was gathering myself together, I was suddenly startled to find that an object was conspicuously lying on top of my bedside table. Right in the middle, one single item that I could not for the life of me remember being there the night before… For the very first time, the performer slowly opens up his left hand to reveal its contents.
A 10p coin! But on top of that, just like I am showing you right now, the 10p was lying tail side up. The very same orientation that the devil had revealed in the nightmare. Coincidentally, the orientation that you freely selected earlier on too, *
and essentially the one that could have prevented me from burning in hell. I could not believe my own eyes so I picked up the coin to see if it was real or perhaps just a figment of my imagination. But when I examined it, I had a rather distressing surprise: the opposite side was completely burned. The performer shows that the head side is scorched on the surface. It symbolises the fact that he had correctly predicted the volunteer’s original selections. The coin co in is a match and the burned head side indicates the performer predicted the volunteer would choose the “safe” orientation: tail side up.
Now, as a token of appreciation for volunteering, I will give you this coin. Let this be a gift from me to you. Keep it in a safe place where you can always find it, so that you will forever remember rememb er that sometimes sometim es all it takes in life is one bad decision to bring about a potentially dreadful outcome. But as you proved it tonight, the one thing you should count on at all times to avert any danger is your powerful instinct.
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Explanations
I assume that most mentalists will probably regard this effect as a bizarre variation of Max Maven’s “Positive Negative” ( Video Mind, Volume ). While this may be true, my actual inspiration was an effect by Docc 2 ). Hilford called “Nightmare Coin” ( Monster Monster Mentalism, Volume 2 – Curse of Monster Mentalism). I really loved the idea of creating a spooky story about a dream and that would somehow involve the selection of an imaginary coin. Yet, I wanted to be able to give it away as a souvenir in the end. In the original routine, the method prevents you from doing so, unless you make a switch on the offbeat and I did not want to employ any sleight-of-hand. Docc Hilford’s beautiful script does give a perfect justification for keeping the coin. However, I wondered if one could come up with a way of not only offering it as a gift but also making it a very unique and special item. This is how I eventually developed the additional “heads or tails” part of the routine. The subsequent change I made was obviously in the storyline. When I hit upon the idea of having a seemingly burned coin, I knew the narrative would have to involve some kind of fire, hence the reference to Lucifer and Hell. This also means that, with a little bit of imagination, you can take the present routine and create your own (less satanic) presentation if you so wish. In addition, I have chosen to use the dream as a plot twist towards the end instead of giving the audience all the elements from the outset. I enjoy the fact that, up until that point, people are left wondering where this incredible1 story is going, which creates a slight tension. Thus, when I finally reveal that it was all nothing but a nightmare, everything suddenly makes sense, which generates a brief moment of relaxation and people now "
In every sense of the word! ""
coincidentally share the same sense of relief as the character experienced upon awakening. The main reason why I choose to go into so many details is because, as I mentioned before, the story is the cornerstone of the entire routine. So, in a nutshell, the subtext is the following: the performer mentions a dream he had recently in which he found himself playing a game with the Devil. As the story unfolds, a volunteer is simultaneously instructed to go through a sequence of imaginary selections. In the end, the performer reveals a prediction (in the form of a coin) which not only matches the spectator’s choices but also indicates that the nightmare might have been real after all. Now that we are on the same page, let us have a look at the methodological skeleton of the routine. It can essentially be divided into two parts: forcing the 10p and predicting heads or tails. How to force the 10p:
The coin is forced through classic equivoque. In other words, the spectator is presented with three different objects and given an apparent free choice. Yet, all the subsequent stages of the selection process are framed in such a way that it will always end with the same result. The main difference here is that we use invisible items. Therefore, it is important to ask the volunteer to make an effort to visualise those three coins as you place them in three different locations on the table. I also like to use a penny, a 10p and a pound because they each have a different colour. That way, the spectator can easily distinguish them in their mind’s eye. Then, you instruct that person to take their left hand and pick up an imaginary coin. As they do that, you instantly know which one they choose depending on where they place their hand. I first became aware of that method in Derren Brown’s “Invisible Deal” routine ( The Devil’s Picturebook, ). The interesting thing to notice here is that, by Disc 2: Psychological ). arranging the imaginary coins on three distinct parts of the table and by asking the volunteer to mentally visualise them, there is no need to ask any questions whatsoever since that person will inevitably pick up an invisible object wherever you have located it in the first place.
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The volunteer’s selections then determine the rest of the equivocation. All the while, this person should be asked to follow their intuition as this very fact might prove to be important at a later stage. If they immediately take the 10p coin, you can proceed exactly as described above and go into the heads-or-tails part of the routine. Should they take a different coin, you then instruct that person to make another selection with their right hand. If that second coin happens to be the 10p, you immediately ask the volunteer to toss either one over their shoulder supposedly for good luck just like at the Trevi Fountain in Rome. If they use their right hand, that means they imagine throwing the 10p. To which you say: “Perfect! Remember that you could have thrown any coin and you chose that particular one”. You then move on to the next phase. Yet, if they throw an indifferent coin with their left hand, you instantly discard that as a mere lucky charm and bring all the attention back to the coin that has remained inside the other hand and which is to now be thrown up in the air to check which side is showing when it lands. Finally, if the volunteer happens to select two indifferent coins at the start, you simply ask them to throw both selections over their shoulder for good luck and focus on the invisible coin that has remained on the table the entire time. How to predict heads or tails:
This part is not really a force per se as it uses something that could be identified as verbal equivoque. What this means is that the prediction will always be a 10p with an apparently scorched head side. Nevertheless, the spectator can freely choose any which side they want. How does it work? Well, whatever they say will determine how the revelation of the coin is to be interpreted. In this instance, the burn mark can either mean that you somehow guessed the volunteer would choose the other (unmarked) side or it can also represent the target itself. Thus, the ending of the routine relies on this ambiguity. This is a principle I have independently come up with and that some mentalists may recognise from Paul Brook’s “One In The Hand” (again, thanks Paul for
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allowing me to share this!). The important factor to remember here is that the spectator’s possible choices bring about two different verbal “outs”: •
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If they choose the tail side up, you pretend you personally chose the opposite side in the nightmare. If they choose the head side up, you pretend you personally chose the exact same in the nightmare.
As a consequence, the out does not just impact the prediction, it also has a practical bearing on the denouement of the story: •
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If they choose the tail side up, you proceed as previously described. In this case, the moral is that the volunteer escaped from the fires of Hell thanks to their powerful intuition 2 , which is proved by the coin prediction. The scorched surface of the head side signifies that you somehow knew they would choose the “safe” tail side (unlike you in the dream), and the story ends rather well. If they choose the head side up, then you must make it all about the fact that this is the side both you and the spectator chose in the nightmare. In this situation, the burned head side means this is the side that you predicted the person would choose. In the end, the moral is completely different as, in a final twist, the story takes on a slightly darker turn: The spectator made the wrong decision... Maybe this wasn’t a dream after all… Maybe the performer is the Devil… Who knows?
How to prepare the “gimmick”:
If you try to put a coin over a flame, you will quickly realise that it cannot actually burn. burn. What you might be able to obtain is, at most, a slight discolouration on the surface (believe me, I have tried!). From a logical scientific point of view, this makes perfect sense since metal can only melt when it is exposed to intense heat. Consequently, we are going to disguise this coin to make it look like it is burned, which is in fact a much easier (and far less dangerous) process. To #
Remind the volunteer of the preceding selection process (equivocation) in which you
highlighted the fact they had to follow their first instinct (cf. page 13). "%
do so, we are going to blacken the surface of the head side to give it a mysteriously sooty appearance. The best solution I have found is to simply use some black nail polish. A tube only costs about £3 ($4) and it enables you to prepare dozens of coins at once. Alternately, some black paint can also do the trick if you happen to have some at hand. Apply one coat of nail polish (unevenly) over the surface and let it dry for a couple of minutes. Then, use another coin (or metallic object) to scrape some of the lacquer off. The end result might possibly be the worst paint-job in history but it will definitely seem like the 10p has gone through hell .
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Credits
Larry Becker, “Heads or Tails”, Mentalism For Magicians : Published in 1979, this effect is regarded as the earliest in the magic and mentalism literature with invisible coins and a prediction of heads or tails. Max Maven, “Positive Negative”, Video Mind, Volume 2 : A variation of the original Larry Becker plot and possibly the very first use of an equivoque with invisible coins. Richard Busch, “A Coin In Mind”, Peek Performances : Another effect based on the prediction of a selected imaginary coin. It is interesting to note that this handling is not based on equivoque as a selection process. Instead, it makes use of double entendre, which the present routine is equally based on. David Parr, “Proof Positive”: A different handling for the equivocation of an invisible coin. Paul Carnazzo, “Salt”, Carnage : Another expansion of the Becker classic with a different and very interesting justification for throwing the imaginary coin over the shoulder. Paul Brook, “One In The Hand”: Published in 2009, this effect was the first use of a coin with a marked side and an ambiguous interpretation. However, both his handling and presentation are very different. Therefore, I strongly suggest you check out this routine if you do not already know about it.
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Docc Hilford, “Nightmare Coin”, Monster Mentalism, Volume 2 – Curse of Monster Mentalism: Mentalism: My original inspiration for this routine. I cannot recommend this DVD set highly enough! Derren Brown, “Invisible Deal”, The Devil’s Picturebook, Disc 2: Psychological : An awesome prediction effect with playing cards.
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Final Words
We have finally reached the end of the manuscript. Thank you once again for your interest in this routine. I sincerely hope the explanations have made perfect sense to you and that you have a lot of fun performing this effect. You should now have all the tools to let your audience embark on an imaginary Faustian journey that ends with a souvenir that will forever be reminiscent of that rather puzzling experience. If you happen to have any queries, please do not hesitate to send me an email at:
[email protected] To be updated about the latest mentalism products offered by Arcane Arts, feel free to visit our website: we bsite: http://arcanearts-ltd.com/
À bientôt , Francis Girola, Glasgow 2017
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