I recently had the chance to read the ebook "Pure Mentalism" by underground German mentalist Nico Heinrich.
Hopefully opening this thread can give his manuscript the opportunity to be more well known by the community, as Nico himself doesn't have an account on The Magic Café.
This is pure mentalism. No complicated set ups, no gimmicks. However this is advanced stuff! If you don't know how to handle your audience - this is not for you. If you never read Corinda's 13 Steps to Mentalism nor Annemann's Practical Mental Effects - this is not for you. Otherwise you don't want to miss this.
PHYSICAL EMOTIONS II is a reversed which hand effect with two emotions. Finally you reveal what they where thinking of. All you need is two business cards and a pen. It's 100% impromptu.
BOLD PSYCHOMETRY is so *** clean and fooling, that I can imagine "real" psychics doing it. You ask them to think of a positive and then three negative character traits. They are written on business cards, which are mixed and placed on the table. You never see the writing - yet you are able to locate and reveal the positive character trait without touching the card. It is not what you expect. This looks and feels real. Again 100% impromptu.
ERASING A FEAR is a technique to A) create the illusion of being able to make fears disappear and B) actually lighten someones fear.
NUMBER STEAL MIND READING is just fun to perform. It's a flirty framework for any mind reading demo. Furthermore it is an extremely elegant way of getting someones phone number.
FORGOTTEN IMPRESSIONS is the boldest peek out there. You can use it with zodiac signs, numbers, dates, colors - virtually anything. What makes this concept unique though is: Later on they won't even remember that they wrote something.
This effects basically allows you in a simple way to know where your spectator hid a billet as well as divining its contents. Although the method isn't new by itself, I liked the "out" concept that Nico has added which I see working perfectly well. It's not my favorite effect of the book though but it's decent.
I have played with a similar concept for "which hand" in my new release Intimum Sacrarium, but the effects are very different.
My rating for this effect is 8 / 10.
I found this effect worth reading for one of the subtleties Nico uses at the moment of telling the spectators to write their emotions. But I don't think the effect is in itself amazing, I wasn't really very surprised with it as the methodology isn't something innovative.
I feel it has a LOT of potential though, so my rating is 6 / 10.
Personally I didn't care about this effect. It made me feel like it wasn't revolutionary and so I didn't find it to be special. My rating is 4 / 10.
This effect is simply BEAUTIFUL.
I totally LOVED the idea and concept behind it, it's amazing and ULTRA practical, and if you like mentalism you will enjoy it, period.
Personally, I can't wait to use this, yes... it's more oriented towards casual performances, but it's simply EPIC!
As described in the book this is a clever, flirty, amusing, memorable and fun way to reveal a thought from someone.
Loved this one. My rating is 10 / 10.
This idea is simply DEVASTATING!!!
Basically this is Nico's approach to be able to know something your spectator thought about with almost nothing; it's almost impromptu, absolutely devious and I definitely loved this.
I was in shock to read just how good this is, and no, I'm not "overhyping", it's beautiful stuff indeed. My mind was instantly flying with all sort of ideas when I was done reading.
My rating is 10 / 10, yeah!
That's how good this one is, simply BRILLIANT!
There are some killer ideas in here, mostly the Number Steal and Forgotten Impressions are memorable.
My average rating would be 7.6 / 10.