Glossolalia

Here’s a good idea from reader Cadence L.

I created a new presentation of Alphablocks/Ideomotor-by-Proxy, the premise being: certain Christian denominations practice glossolalia (aka speaking in tongues). From a religious perspective it’s a miraculous angelic language. From a neuroscientific perspective it’s a learned behavior mostly consisting of repetitive syllables. Now the story goes, you read a paper by a hokey professor who theorized that, for instance, if someone speaking in tongues is thinking about a concept like “God” they tend to make lots of “g” “o” and “d” sounds, and other people will get an impression of “God” (or whatever they were thinking of). That’s why people find glossolalia so meaningful. Everyone thinks this theory is BS but you decide to test it anyway. You get your friend to suggest a hymn, Bible verse, inspirational Pinterest quote, Katy Perry song, or anything like that which resonates with them. You listen to it together to get in the correct mental state. Then you tell your friend to concentrate on one of the words in the text which stuck with them in some way and start trying to speak in tongues. Tell them NOT to consciously use the sounds in their chosen word. Try to pick out the letters you “heard emphasized” in their utterance. If the letters you have to name are obviously not the ones they emphasized, chalk it up to English spelling quirks or sound shifts induced by low-level trance states.... You can fill in the rest.

Hope you get something out of this. I like how this distances the effect from “mind-reading.” It’s slightly too believable coming from a religious studies nerd like me, but for most people that wouldn't be a problem.

I like this a lot, whether used with the Alphablocks concept or with traditional Progressive Anagrams.

I think everyone agrees that when it comes to Progressive Anagrams, naming letters is at best kind of bland, and at worst, sort of transparent.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense as far as mindreading goes. If you’re thinking of a Lamborghini, you’re either picturing it in your mind or imagining being in one. Those should be the elements that would be easy to pick up via mindreading.

No one is ever thinking of the spelling of the word. (Well, other than me when I was just trying to spell it in the last paragraph.) No one is ever like, Ah, yes, let me try to send you the thought of a Lamborghini. Well… there’s that H, of course. And that beautiful B. An I. Two I's, actually. Those lines with a dot on top that we all love so much. That O… so round.

It’s just the least interesting thing about the thought in their head, so focusing on that aspect (if you’re a “mindreader”) feels pretty bizarre.

When it comes to Anagrams, Alphablocks, Squared Anagrams, etc. It’s almost always best to get the letters in play through some other channel besides their “thoughts.” This glossolalia premise is a good way. Another one would be to pick out letters you find in some “automatic writing” scribbles. A Ouija board works beautifully, of course. Alphabet blocks. Imagining typing on a keyboard. Or, my favorite which appears here: A trick where they chew on random letters from Alphabits cereal that happen to appear in the word they’re thinking, they then spit in your mouth and you can tell them what the word they’re thinking of is. (That uses the Alphablocks methodology I came up with, which means they never have to tell you the letters in their word.)

Zero Carry

A new approach I'm taking with the 100 Trick Repertoire is to create certain "slots" to fill for tricks that serve a particular purpose.

For example, last year we talked about the Failsafe Trick. This is a card trick with certain properties that you can fall back to if something goes sideways with the one you were planning on performing.

The category I've been working on recently is something I call Zero Carry.

Zero Carry effects don't require me to carry anything special on me. No decks of cards. No billets. No sponge balls. No thumbtip. No swami.

In most cases I will have something on me, but I think it's good to have at least one slot set aside for a trick that presumes you have absolutely nothing. Like the Failsafe Trick, it's a safety hatch for when your mind blanks or you're caught without your usual gear.

In recent years, I would choose to do an effect on my phone. That's the obvious solution. But as per last Wednesday's post, I'm trying to rely on phone magic a little less these days.

Now, of course, I could borrow a ring or a coin and do some simple sleight of hand with that. But I'm looking more for a trick with a premise to it. Not just visual skill.

To be clear, the trick doesn't have to be propless. It can be, but it can also utilize items found in most environments.

I don't often ask for input from you. (Let's face it, no one else asks for your input either. I don't want to break the pattern and confuse you.) But when I solicited Failsafe Tricks, I got a few good recommendations that I had overlooked which have made it into my repertoire.

So now I'm asking you to share your favorite phone-free Zero Carry tricks, if you have one.

I'll collect some of the responses and share my own in a future post.

Mailbag #160

I'm a high school teacher. Like many of us who perform, I find myself in this sort of public facing role, where magic can come up more than it probably should. I teach students as young as grade 8 and as high as grade 12. It's tricky to find a presentational style to bridge this gap while also maintaining professionalism and building a sense of "teacher lore". 

It helps to have a sense of "lore" around you as a teacher, especially in a private school setting. "Lore" here means a mixture of stories, personal details, and inside jokes that students gradually discover over a longer period of time. 

I've found a Jerxy style Universal Presentation for teachers that I've been using for the past year or so:

You tell your students, offhandedly, at a random point in the school year, "I'm going to Magic School". It's a night school for people who want to work on their magic, but it's expensive and you commute really far for it. You do it after hours.

The name of the fictional magic school weirdly aligns with the actual school you work at, but you don't draw too much attention to this. So if your school is called, for a made up example, the Willard P. Jameson School (WPJ), here's the bit. At night you are attending the "Wizards, Psychics, and Jugglers" (WPJ) school. I've found this is juuust enough of a wink that the older students will get it and the younger students might not. And if they do, cool, it's a bit. :)

Some bullets about what this provides:

- This is the perfect excuse to try things that are untested without hurting that precious teacher aura... "hey my coins teacher needs me to do 3 variations on this coin trick and I wanna test variation two, do you have a second? Thanks so much".

- It also gives you license to mix real magic terminology with absolute bullshit. I try to make some of it plausible or real and some of it complete nonsense. "Diagonal Palm Shift" sounds like made up bullshit already, which is nice... but now you can invent whole new moves. "I need to work on my 'lefty ghost recurrence move' can you help?"

- If anyone seriously corners you and sincerely asks "hey uhh there's no way you actually go to magic school, right?" you can either give it to them and be like "yea well done, do you wanna join?" or commit to the bit and obfuscate and play dumb, like I know you like to do, based on what the situation might require. 

- This also sets up the "supporting cast" you mention in one of your books (Here Be Bunnies, I think), of The Rival, The Mentor, and many others....

- Most importantly, like any student, I get to have strong opinions about my teachers that I can share for those that are curious: "My card magic teacher is amazing on the basics but he's a bit boring and his tastes differ from mine. Enough with the packet tricks, Mr. Jefferson!"... "My coins teacher is a stickler for details and a bit of a hardass...." —KM

Yeah, I think stuff like this is great. The only point I would add is that you don’t have to be a teacher to take advantage of this kind of structure. While it’s nice to have the symmetry of the student/teacher dynamic, you can really set up the same storyline regardless of what job you have. A butcher. A baker. Perchance even a candlestick maker. You’re just one of these things and you’re taking some sore of magic class.

This has similarities to the original White Wand Society concept I wrote up back in 2017—an overarching storyline that can fit any trick you want to perform.

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Re: Friday’s post

Not that I think this means anything but I love conspiracy wank so I can explain how all that 1:1:1 stuff works, in case you or your readers want to construct this kind of imp on the back of a napkin.

Most numerological codes consist of following a method to derive significant numbers from essentially noise.

Often this involves adding together the letters of a word where a=1 b=2 c=3 etc to see if it makes a significant recurring number. 

Anyway the 1:1:1 stuff is just digital roots. 

That is to say 2026, broken into its digits is summed, so 2+0+2+6 which is 10, and then 1+0 is 1.

This is kind of like those tricks where any number multiplied by 9, if you add the digits and then add the digits of the result until you get down to one digit always equals 9, except there's no trick to it 

Notable that the 28th of the month is used in this list (2+8=10, 1+0=1) but you could easily get away with the 29th for an extra 11. Maybe if there are too many it feels less significant.

Either way its worth noting that in 2027 you can digitally root it down to 11 so there will be another slew of these dates, not forgetting that if you sum those digits you get 2 and maybe 2 is the important number in the trick if you're performing this on the 20th of February.

I'd argue the ability to construct and break down these things on paper for the participants in a trick can sell them on the significance far more than a viral image full of 1s.—SS

Yes, I would always break down with them how these numbers are “calculated.”

I’m going to do a“Basic Numerology Bullshitting” post in the future because numbers are everywhere so they’re very easy to incorporate into effects and give some significance to any random date or time you want.

And it makes many math tricks go down much smoother. Even people who hate math often are interested in numerology.

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Look at these fucking idiots. —CA

Okay, that’s a little harsh.

Look, guys, I’m not here to trash you, I want to help you out by informing you this shit is utterly soulless.

It’s also corny. “You chose the King of Spades. And look, here’s a picture of me bursting through the King of Spades.”

It’s not just that it’s AI. It’s also that it’s the most bland, hollow, and charmless use of it.

I know you think it looks cool. I promise you, it doesn’t. It looks terrible. It looks generic, cheap, and like you put the least amount of effort you could into this. You may have been lucky enough to be underexposed to this sort of thing, but trust me, it’s everywhere and people are already tired of it.

Honestly though, even if this type of imagery wasn’t played out—even if it was 20 years ago and you actually shot this picture for real in a studio—it would still suck. “Look! Here’s me crashing through the card you chose!”

Uhm… why? What emotion do you think something like that taps into for an audience?

Literally taking 12 seconds to draw a stickman holding a King of Spades and then using that as a reveal—saying your granddaughter drew a portrait of you—would be infinitely more appealing to people than that image. (And that’s just one of 1000 better ways to reveal a card.)

I’m not trying to shit on you for having bad taste. I’m trying to warn you how that image will come across to the overwhelming majority of people.

Dustings #138

Did you make any New Year's Resolutions? It's not too late. Don't get hung up on the idea that you "missed" midnight on January first. "Oh well, there's always 2027."

New Year's Resolutions can be made until January 15th. Where do I get that idea from? I made it up. But considering most resolutions are abandoned by that point anyway, I'm giving you permission to keep making them until then.

Don't know what resolution to make?

Here's one everyone can use. I call it…

Count Your Blessings

Create a note or a Google doc on your phone where you record every good thing that happens to you throughout the day.

It doesn't have to be big stuff. It doesn't have to be like, "Great news! In an 'Indecent Proposal'-style scenario, Sydney Sweeney offered me a million dollars to have sex with her."

It can just be little things. Good conversations. Good meals. A nice walk. A movie, book, or show that you really enjoyed. Some nagging pain that goes away. A blog post that inspired you.

You get a point for every blessing you note. Your goal is simply to get as many points as you can. Let this game always be running in the back of your life, reorienting your thoughts to search for the good moments happening around you all the time.

The magic isn't just in remembering—it's in training yourself to notice these moments while they're happening. Your brain will literally start scanning for things to add to your list. You're gamifying optimism and appreciation.

At the end of the year, you can look back and see hundreds of little moments that brought joy to your life.

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I've been getting a lot of "Will you review my product?" emails in recent weeks.

That usually means it's been too long since I mentioned this:

I don't review products on this site.

In my newsletter, I do write about products I like and have been using in the previous month. Technically, I don't even know if you'd call those reviews. I'm just writing about the stuff I'm using and how I'm using it.

If you want, you can send me stuff—either to my email address or the mailing address in the contact link above. I'm always happy to receive something interesting you've been working on. And if you definitely want me to mention your product on the site, you can see the options for that in this post.

Otherwise, I'll just end up writing about it if I like it.

For reference, last year I received 46 free tricks, ebooks, downloads, or magic apps. I ended up writing about 12 of them. If you don't like those odds, or you don't think what you're offering is likely to cut through the noise with me, no need to send it my way.

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In the most recent newsletter I wrote about a trick called Pathfinder.

I had forgotten (or perhaps never really fully understood) that you can do more or less the same trick with the spectator looking at any page on their phone using Marc Kerstein’s Xeno Anywhere and Momentum.

As Eli B. wrote to inform me:

Loving Keepers 1. Just a quick note for those who love the pathfinder  “go to any website and think of any word” idea but wish it was on a spectators phone, the answer is Xeno Anywhere combined with Inertia Pro (momentum) by Marc Kerstein. 

They can go to any website, pick any large word, and it generates a progressive anagram as well as giving you a screenshot and an AI summary if you like that. Not to mention xeno comes with an apple watch app and direct connection to the peeksmith 3 which makes it much easier to move “secretly” through the PA. But you could also do it with a bluetooth remote in your pocket, an earpiece, or even smart glasses (my favorite).

There’s going to be different trade-offs here, but if using the spectator’s phone is a priority for you, then this is a great option.

If you’re not using any secret devices to cue you, you can still use the presentation I wrote up in the newsletter which justifies why you’re looking at your phone throughout the process.

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Tomorrow, and several other dates throughout this year, has this very powerful numerical property.

What does this mean exactly? I have no clue. But these dates make great "Calendar Imps." They're special days where you can reach out to someone and tell them you want to try something you recently read about, something that has a better chance of working on one of these particular dates (for whatever reason you come up with).

You can say to someone, "Are you free next Wednesday? There's this thing I read about recently… it sounds like bullshit, but it's from a source I kind of trust, so I'm intrigued. It only works on a few days of the year, days that reduce down to 1s in numerology. No, I don't really know what that means either, but I want to give it a try."

With the right person, someone who enjoys the sort of things you do, you get to build anticipation days in advance and tie your performance to something that exists in the real world. (The real world of numerology, at least.)

The Tenyo Agnostic's Guide to the 2026 Tenyo Line

Tenyo Agnostic means I’m not a fanboy, but I’m also not one of those people who shits on Tenyo or says, “They just look like toys” or something like that.

I want to like Tenyo. In years past I’ve done full 20+ page newsletters on their new releases, but I realized much of that was me trying to find some value in things that weren’t so great.

If you’re a Tenyo collector, you’re going to buy everything they release, regardless of how good or bad it is.

If you hate Tenyo, I probably won’t be able to talk you into any of their tricks.

But if you are—like me—someone who appreciates some Tenyo that has actual performance value, then these brief comments may help you as you consider the most recent Tenyo Line.

Erase Away

This looks decent, but an eraser, a special close-up pad, and a servante is too much junk to have to deal with to vanish a coin in a casual situation. It’s too rinky dink for a stage or parlor performance. And it’s unusable if you’re going table-to-table doing magic.

And I’m unconvinced a spectator in real time wouldn’t just assume you knocked the coin into your lap under cover of the eraser.

4/10

Jailbreak

It looks cool and it’s fooling to the extent that they won’t know exactly how it works.

But in magic, you can get away with an abnormal examinable object, or a normal-looking unexaminable object. But you can’t really get away with an abnormal unexaminable object. Which is what this is.

So they’ll know the rods must move out of the way somehow, and that seemingly unnecessary boxy bottom piece will give many a clue to what’s happening. It’s puzzling, but not magical.

Also, I found the workings to be occasionally finicky, and not in the way that “more rehearsal” would help. You can’t really complain that Tenyo is cheaply made, because it’s cheaply sold too. But sometimes that cheapness means a not fully reliable product, which is what Jailbreak is.

5/10

Wish Bag

Trying to pass off a bag with a mirrored interior as anything other than a magic prop is hard enough.

The fact that it’s emblazoned with the name the trick is marketed under makes it essentially useless for anyone who might actually want to perform with it.

3/10

Puzzling Cookies

If you order all of Tenyo’s releases in a given year, and return your proof of purchase, you get a bonus effect. These effects are pretty much always terrible and a waste of your time to try and procure. It’s not just figurative trash, it’s literal trash—cheap paper/cardboard props. Only bother obtaining these if you’re a completionist, collector, or you want to turn around and sell it to some sucker.

I honesty barely understand what this trick is supposed to be.

1/10

Nothing this year is a must-buy.

If you want to see the clever workings behind a trick, get Jailbreak. But if you’re looking for actual effects to incorporate in a performance, save your money.

Breaking the Phone Habit

This is another thing I'm going to focus on this year: a rule I've put in place regarding phone magic. Partly as a challenge to myself and partly because I believe it will create stronger magic overall.

iPhone magic is seductive because a lot of it is incredibly strong, it's convenient (you almost always have your phone on you), and most of it is very easy. And it seems perfectly normal to pull out your phone, as opposed to a deck of cards or four half-dollars.

Fifteen years ago, there were a lot of people who derided "phone magic." At that time it made sense. Most of the magic for phones was trash. There would be a cartoon-looking coin that would float around the screen and you could "pull it out" of the phone. Or cheap graphics of a deck of cards they could flick through and you'd know what card they stopped on.

Older magicians would say, "If you do a trick with your phone, people are just going to assume it's technology." With those types of apps, that was definitely true.

But in the years that followed, apps got much more sophisticated, streamlined, and invisible. And, interestingly, even though the technology involved got far more complicated—it also became more hidden. Cell phones became so ubiquitous that people didn't just assume it was the phone doing all the work.

But still, it's possible to rely on the phone too much. And that's what I found myself doing recently.

So my new rule is that no more than one in four tricks I do for someone will involve the phone. If all your tricks use a phone, or a deck of cards, or slips of blank paper, or keys on your keychain, then all the energy gets sucked into those objects. The "magic" doesn't feel like this expansive substance that might affect anything around you—it begins to feel like this thing you do with that one particular object.

"He does tricks with his phone."

"He does tricks with little cards he carries in his wallet."

"He does tricks with sponge balls."

Magic should feel like they have no idea what's going to come next. We've all had the experience of people losing interest in our magic, even when the tricks we’re showing them are better than the ones we showed them before. That's what happens when predictability enters the equation. Mixing up not just what you do, but what you do it with, is a big part of preventing that—which is why I'll leave the phone in my pocket a bit more this year, where the EMFs can slowly roast my sperm to the point of complete inviability. A small price to pay for wonder.

Charismatic Magic

This is something I originally wrote in my post on Charms. But this concept is so fundamental to how I think about performing that it deserves its own post. In fact, it's going to be one of my personal focuses for 2026.

People don't like to be used, scammed, or lied to for the purpose of your self-aggrandizement.

And they're fairly indifferent to being fooled or impressed.

But, surprisingly, what I’ve found is this:

People like to be toyed with.

They like to be charmed, seduced, and messed with.

They don't even mind being lied to, if the lie is intended for their enjoyment and everyone knows it isn't meant to be believed.

So much of magic is just: "The card you named is at the number you named."

Oh, wow. Yeah. Huh… so it is.

They're fooled. But there's no sense you crafted this moment for them—just that you executed a procedure at them.

But when you embellish tricks with things like "Charms" or other "extra presentational" techniques I've written about—like Imps and Reps, or even just a lavish presentation—you are creating Charismatic Magic.

People understand you could have fooled them more directly. You didn't have to add these ornaments or take these detours. You only did that because you wanted to toy with them a bit more.

Being "toyed with" or teased may seem like a negative thing… but not when your lover or your friend does it. Then it adds energy and vitality to the interaction.

So much of magic is about efficiency. I got the card to their number. I did it quickly.

That's great, but this isn't the Department of Motor Vehicles. The value isn't in how quickly and efficiently you can accomplish the goal.

"In my ACAAN, if they name 40, I have them count 12 from the bottom of the deck to save time."

Do you have diarrhea? Are you on a NASCAR pit crew? What's the rush? Why are we killing tension in order to shave seconds?

My approach to magic (the Jerxian approach, if you must) follows two paths.

The Carefree Path: Can we make the effect simpler, more impromptu, more convenient to perform? Can we offload any element methodologically that might interrupt the flow of the performance?

The Charismatic Path: What can we add to the interaction to make it feel richer, fuller, more enchanting?

As magicians, it's easy to obsess over the mechanics—the sleights, the gimmicks, the details of the trick itself. We become like chefs perfecting a single dish, fixated on ingredients and technique to create the most impressive plate.

But the trick lives within a moment. And focusing on the broader experience has far greater impact than perfecting micro-details that only other magicians will ever notice.

To go back to the food analogy, this is the mindset not of planning the flawless dish, but of creating the perfect romantic dinner.

On the Carefree Path, what's a delicious but simple recipe that will taste fantastic but won't require me to be in the kitchen the whole time? What can I create ahead of time to get it out of the way? What shortcuts can I take that don't sacrifice quality but will allow me to be more present with my guest?

On the Charismatic Path, what music should I play? What should the lighting be? What should the tablescape be? What if I timed it so we went for a walk after the meal, and by the time we got back, the smell of dessert was meeting us from the oven? These are things that don't change the taste of the food, but they can create the memory of the perfect meal.

The Jerxian approach is to make the behind-the-scenes preparation and execution as simple as possible while layering the moment itself with details that don't just fool people but make them feel charmed, seduced, and toyed with.

There's a practical advantage here too: “Charismatic magic” is immune to the modern world. It can only exist in three dimensions, in real time, between real people. AI can't replicate it. Video can't capture it. No amount of online exposure can burn it. The magic isn't just in what happens—it's in how it feels to be there when it does.