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"This is an exceptional piece of mentalism that combines some great principles. I will definitely be performing this, and you should too." - Terrence Gilchrist
"I'm a fan of the Unnamed Magician's work in general, but this is, in my opinion, easily among his top 5 best effects. It will leave your spectators with their jaws wide open!" - Wayne Lesley
"What a knockout trick! A true reputation maker." - Tony Bianco
A spectator thinks of a card in the fairest possible manner yet, despite all odds, it was predicted by the magician. If you are a fan of both prediction effects and thought-of-card effects, then Visionary Voyage offers the best of both worlds.
Imagine:
The magician introduces a prediction deck (closed in a card box). He tells the spectator that he reversed a card (as his prediction) when he woke up in the morning after seeing a vision. This card, the magician explains, will be revealed at the end of the experiment.
At this point, another deck of cards is introduced. The magician begins by spreading it face-up to show that all the cards are different and in no particular order. Then, he hands the deck to the spectator as he says, "I will have you think of a card in a very fair manner. Of course, I can ask you to think of one in your head right now but perhaps there's some way I can psychologically influence you towards a particular card or perhaps I could rely on you to think of a popular card. Either of those things would give me an unfair advantage, so instead what I'm going to have you do is, I'm going to have you think of a card in a random way. For that, I want you to begin by selecting a random number. As my back is turned, just cut off any amount of cards and silently count them to generate a random number. Then, bury those cards anywhere inside the remaining cards on the table." The magician turns away and the spectator does as instructed.
Once they're done, the magician turns back around and says, "Now, using that number that you randomly generated, I will have you think of a card in the deck. First, begin by shuffling the deck." The spectator shuffles the deck (they can shuffle in any way they desire - there are no restrictions).
After the shuffling, the magician continues, "In order to think of a card, you will begin dealing the cards one by one face down on the table, from the top of the shuffled deck. Before you deal each card down though, you will look at its face. You will keep doing this until you arrive at the card at your random number. That's the card you will mentally remember. But you won't stop dealing there - you will continue dealing cards after that, again looking at the face of each card just before you deal it down, and stop at a random point (as early or as late as you want). That is to ensure that I have no idea when you think of a card. Also, make sure that I don't see the faces of any of the cards as you do this." The spectator does as instructed.
Once the spectator has finished dealing, there is a face down pile of dealt cards in front of them, one of which is their merely thought of card. At this point, the magician reminds the spectator that he made a prediction at the very beginning - this was before the spectator thought of a card; in fact, it was before they even randomly generated a number. The magician grabs the prediction deck from the table and removes the cards from the box. He spreads them face-up in his hands to display one face-down card (his predicted card).
The spectator is asked to hold the predicted card in their hand, and only once they have done that, they are asked to reveal the name of their thought of card for the first time. They then turn over the card in their hand and it's a match!
Some important conditions of note:
- When generating the random number, the spectator has a completely free choice as to where to cut the deck. There aren't any crimped cards or long / short cards or anything of the sort to force the point at which they cut.
- While the spectator is secretly counting the number of cards they cut off, the magician doesn't peek behind him - he's fully turned away and blind in regards to what's happening behind him.
- The magician never touches the deck (the deck that the spectator uses to think of a card) during the entire routine. From the moment the magician hands the deck over to the spectator, he never touches it again.
- The spectator never names their random number at any point in time, and they only name their thought of card after the predicted card is in their hand.
- Note that you will need two different types of gimmicked decks to perform this effect. These decks are quite common. You may already have one or both. If not, they can be readily purchased at your favorite dealer.
1st edition 2025, PDF 10 pages.
word count: 2956 which is equivalent to 11 standard pages of text
