Miracles for Less: A Lesson in Deception
Presented by Mystopher & Carolee Moore, Mentalists & Magicians
About the Speaker
Mystopher is an American mentalist and magician. He continues to study magic theory, rare memory techniques, body language, hypnosis, linguistics, non-verbal communication, theatre and stand up comedy.
Carolee Moore has been an American mentalist Since 1997. In the early 90’s Carolee began studying the art of mental magic and mindreading. She practices a rare combination of psychological and perceptual manipulation in entertainment.
About the Event
Summary with commentary for the presentation given at the 254th meeting of CFI- Michigan held on June 11, 2008.
The meeting topic was: Miracles for Less: A Lesson in Deception. The dynamic presenters for this live performance of sleight of hand and enlightenment as to how our perceptions may lead us astray, were husband and wife team Mystopher (Christopher) and Carolee Moore. The couple have delighted audiences with their use of suggestion and forms of covert psychological influence for over 10 years. Their trademark routines include thought reading and transference, manipulating and deceiving by combining magic theory, rare memory techniques, body language, dexterity, linguistics, non-verbal communication and a heaping forkful of imagination.
Mystopher is an American mentalist and magician who continues to study the above- mentioned disciplines as well as hypnosis, theater and stand up comedy. Carolee focuses on mental magic and mindreading (mentalism). She combines psychological and perceptual manipulation in a highly entertaining manner. The couple lives in Chicago.
Mystopher took the stage first and, after some witty and droll remarks, recited a poem. Some lines from it incorporated the title of their presentation. To paraphrase those extracted lines: Look but don’t obsess; we don’t sell souls for duress- but sell miracles for less. He noted that the church is especially adept at deception techniques and that he learned a good deal about manipulation and working a crowd from attending church services. Since there is no true magic, as in supernatural events or real miracles, we must question everything. This is especially true for claims of an extraordinary type, which, as the late Carl Sagan advised us, require extraordinary evidence before we should find any credence in them.
Mystopher noted that we look but do not observe critically; the eye sees but the brain does not pick up on the visual cues correctly. This writer would say that we interpret visual cues from our environment in a manner consistent with what we have evolved to see and derive the meaning from such cues in a way that led to success for our ancestors, but leave us vulnerable to being manipulated by those who know how to exploit our natural responses to the visual environment. Creators of optical illusions and magicians make use of how our minds are wired to interpret the world and use cues that trigger certain interpretations against us, confounding and dismaying us, or merely tricking us into false conclusions. We have to learn to see. Those who employ sleight of hand or other deceptive techniques veer off from what we have trained our minds to perceive, interpret and construct from the outside world. We see what we expect to see and have honed our visual sense to perceive, often failing to note aberrant elements in the environment. Magicians and others trained in the art of deception make use of the knowledge of how we interpret the world to surprise and trick us in an entertaining or merely useful manner—depending on the agenda of the one deceiving.
Mystopher did a series of card tricks to begin with. At one point, early on, he ended up with the 8 of hearts on his glasses that materialized rather mysteriously. He talked about the significance of bluffing in Poker and how faces may be read. To demonstrate how our unconscious, minute changes in our facial expressions give away our thoughts to a trained observer, he had an audience member come up on stage and select out a card. From the deck. He then went through a series of cards, asking questions of the person who selected the card. He correctly detected that the chosen card was a 6 of clubs by watching the man’s face for certain tell- tale signs that he had trained himself to observe.
In another trick an apparently unaltered deck of cards with a rubber band around it ended up with the top card transforming from a King of clubs to a Joker. Another card trick involved an audience member autographing a card that he selected and placing it into a bag with other cards. He then asked that two people tie him up in a strait jacket and put chains around him, padlocking them into place. He quipped that the jacket was similar to those worn typically in Chicago. I assisted in this (working with locks all the time in a psych. hospital, I was well qualified for this task) along with another stalwart member of our group. We trussed him up snugly. Mystopher was to be timed and claimed that he could extricate himself from the apparatus, dump out the bag and locate the selected card, all within four minutes. The timer commenced and he began getting himself out of his bindings in front of us all. He got the key with his mouth and undid the locks and worked his way out of the old fashioned mental patient straight jacket. Time ticked away, however, until it was down to the last seconds by the time he got the bag dumped out. At last he declared, as the last second passed, that he could not find the card from the scattered ones before him. But then—lo and behold- he produced it from his mouth (it should be kept in mind that he kept up a running patter throughout his struggles with the chains and strait jacket with no signs of oral occlusion). The card was complete with the signed name on it.
Next, he called, in humorous fashion, for someone destructive. The CFI member who came up on stage was instructed to rip up a card several times, which she did. Mystopher had her hold onto a sole, ripped fragment of the card but proceeded to eat the rest of the pieces, washing it all down with water. He then bit onto an apparently intact apple and then spit out a piece of it into a bag. He then reached into the fruit and extracted a card- what appeared to be the same one as the one that had been torn and consumed! It was all intact, except for the missing fragment still held in the hand of the audience member on stage. This piece fit into the rest of the card perfectly!
His next request was for assistance from someone who was comfortable around firearms. He had a paint ball gun and had the audience member who stepped up on stage with him initial a single paint ball that was loaded into the gun. The gun was equipped with a laser pointer light. The individual with the gun was to aim at Mystopher through a frame with clear film over it. The magician told us he would catch the ball and we were asked if we wanted him to accomplish this feat using his hand or mouth. Of course, the consensus was for the more dramatic catch by use of his oral cavity. The ball bounced the first time, so the initialing and other prep was set up again. This time the film in the frame tore out upon firing of the paint ball gun and Mystopher seemed to have been struck violently. He emerged from the floor where he had collapsed at the back of the room, with the paint ball, still bearing the initials, being produced from his mouth.
After that, he said with a smile, that he was willing to move away from acts utilizing chains and guns. Instead, he asked for folding money from someone in the audience. Again, he had a willing audience member come on stage, sign the bill and hold onto it through a black cloth draped over it—the top of the eclipsing cloth pinched between his fingers. He had a second person hold aloft a lemon where neither the fellow audience member nor Mystopher could handle it. When the magician from the Windy City pulled away the cloth from the one individual, the money was missing. He then took the lemon from the other and cut into it, revealing the missing paper money inside the freshly cut lemon! The bill still had the signature on it.
Following this, he announced that his wife would take over for the rest of the performance. Her specialty was mentalism. Her first challenge was to have a volunteer from the audience concentrate on a pen that was to be moved telekinetically from its perch on the podium. This did not come to pass. So she had the assistant focus on a lightbulb which shattered in her husband’s hand.
Carolee then asked the volunteer to blindfold her well. Mystopher proceeded to ask her questions regarding people in the audience that he appeared to randomly select, such as how many fingers a person was holding up, the name of another, the color of a shirt or of a hat and other bodily attire. She correctly identified what was in the pocket of an meeting attendee further back and another item of bodily adornment and its hue from a different person. Another picked out a card and she accurately identified it as a 4 of diamonds. Way back in the room a CFI member was asked to think of a vacation spot. She closed in on it, getting impressions, until coming up with Cancun, Mexico, which the member said was correct.
After Carolee finished up her act, we went to the Q&A portion of the meeting. Mystopher was asked, facetiously, if he could make John McCain disappear. When asked what is the easiest thing to fool people with, he wryly responded: religion. Then, more seriously, he replied that misdirection, using slight of hand tricks often are quite effectivel.
In response to how they got involved in this type of performance art, he explained that he had lost money to a scam master on a subway line doing the old shall game and decided that he was not going to be fooled in this way again. He began to steep himself in the art of deception and sleight of hand. From there, he and his wife developed their talents and broadened their acts to incorporate more tricks. They had been doing this since 1997 and he found some pre-WWII tricks that he modified to fit their act and styles better. The main ingredient that adds distinction between one magic act and another is presentation, he noted.
He was asked which magicians he admired. He mentioned Penn and Teller and James (The Amazing) Randi among others. Randi has a foundation he heads that scientifically examines claims of the paranormal or special powers. He even offers a million dollar reward for anyone whose claim can withstand such scrutiny. So far, no one has walked away with the prize money. Penn and Teller are well known for their skepticism and religious non-belief in addition to their magic acts. They also debunk paranormal claims.
Mystopher talked about how some groups of religious people object to what he does as evil and what far-fetched beliefs they were willing to accept while not bringing any more critical examination to acts of prestidigitation. He learned how people perceive the world and how this may be used to deceive them. He also noticed how certain members of the clergy could discern which people were vulnerable to which deceptions that they used. He began figuring out what they looked for, how they read people by body language, affect and other cues. He saw how they worked a crowd and used emotionality to cloud more rational judgment.
He said that adults were easier to fool than children. They have not yet adopted certain ingrained responses to visual cues that may mislead adults when the cues are part of misdirection used by an able magician. He also maintained that often smarter people are easier to fool than less mentally endowed folks. Randi and other former or current magicians are often called upon by brilliant scientific researchers to investiagte extraordinary claims in order to puzzle out how those claiming paranormal powers achieve their feats. Even as trained observers, scientists often fall prey to trickery and deception by a skilled huckster, whereas a good magician will not.
They now use their performances to help explain human perception and what people are especially vulnerable to misinterpreting. He also performs in schools to help usher in concepts of critical thinking and skepticism to young people.
After discussing some famous illusionists, following the next questions, he gave us the memorable line that magic happens in the minds of viewers, not on stage.
Asked about the endurance feats of David Blaine, he mentioned that if what Blaine does are genuine near- superhuman accomplishments, then these should rightly appear in the Guinness Book of World Records. They do not. He talked about how those judging such displays, who are not trained in the art of deception, are as susceptible to being fooled as the general public when a skilled magician is plying his or her talents well.
In response to a question on hypnotism, he said that he classifies this with other forms of magic and that it, too, happens up here—said while indicating his cranium. People who feel that they are cured of some problem through hypnosis have to begin by really wanting the change to happen within themselves. Hypnosis is a tool that allows the person to make his or her own changes for him/herself- it does not come from the hypnotist or other outside forces.
He allowed, replying to another question, that his parents like his magic but do not support fully his larger worldview (one assumes this pertains to his religious skepticism and classification of some dramatic preachers, healers and others claiming a special connection to the divine, with other hucksters who are manipulating the public.)
Asked about Harry Houdini, he noted that it was a mistaken legend that he died during one of his performances. Instead, he had challenged anyone to punch him in the stomach to demonstrate his physical fortitude by withstanding the blow unharmed. A fundamentalist took the challenge but struck when Houdini was unprepared, resulting in a damaged internal organ that he died from on Halloween.
After the magician and escape artist’s beloved mother died, Houdini got heavily into spiritualism in a desperate search to discover if one’s essence survives beyond the grave. Spiritualists he went to showed themselves to be frauds. As a glaring example of this, his mother would supposedly speak to him through the spiritualist in English; a tongue she did not know! This started him on his crusade of debunking charlatans of all types—often embarrassing them by revealing the tricks they employed or doing his own seances where he would demonstrate that it was all trickery. He would not reveal the tricks of magicians who used their talents for entertainment but did not suffer well those who claimed genuine supernatural powers or gifts, especially those preying upon the bereaved, who wanted so desperately to believe their deceased loved one was communicating from the Other Side. For them it was not entertainment and for the alleged spiritualist, it was not a display of talent but a means to extract money from the heartbroken and vulnerable.
Still, if it was possible to exist in some state after death and, further, communicate with those on the mortal plane, Houdini wanted to discover this. With this in mind, he gave his wife a secret code word that he would use if he was able to transmit his thoughts to her from the spirit realm. The code was stolen by another who used it to trick people into believing that Houdini had indeed been able to survive death and pass along the information from the Great Beyond. Therefore, the contention went, life after death was proven. But this deception was uncovered and no one has yet to hear from the departed Houdini.
Summarized (but not conjured up) by Charles LaRue.
