A few thoughts. I take the original poster's point that the trick might not work with his crowd. He's right to be sensitive to context. The answer may be to refrain from performing it for his friends.

Although some good magicians, such as Ricky Jay with Hofzinser's Everywhere and Nowhere, present a trick with a history-of-magic theme, this might not be a good trick for that purpose. When you talk about Vernon, you're creating a layer of distance between you and the audience. It's no longer you and them. Where's the emotional reaction?

My unsought advice: present the trick sincerely as an emotional reaction for the right audience, believe in the presentation's value, or just don't do the trick.

I perform this trick almost exactly as described in the book, and it consistently has great impact.

Eric's advice is great. A sincere presentation not only works great, it's absolutely necessary. If you talk about emotional reaction in a humerous way, the audience will percieve the trick as humerous/entertaining. If you talk about emotional reaction in a serious, mysterious way, the audience will be amazed in a very serious way. This (in my opinion) is infinitely stronger in an effect such as this.


Also...reading emotions is one of those things that, like reading tells, is somewhat believable to a lay audience. Combined with a baffling method like the one in this effect, they have no choice but to believe that you can simply tell what card they're thinking of from their emotions.

I performed it last night at a dinner party and it went over very well.

I did two packet tricks (one to each guest) and then a demo of Skinner's 3 Card Monte (which I kind of botched ) and then grabbed a pack of cards. I think they were tiring of card magic a bit but I warmed them a bit with patter and went into Emotional Reaction. By the end of the trick I was getting "how did he DO THAT?" and the like from both participants. Best of all, after I left the room they just kept repeating it in utter shock.

It's amazing what a little key card action can do to the distracted mind.

Also, a note: Skinner's Monte isn't very impressive to people who are slightly drunk and can't follow "the ace" even if you didn't move it around much.

Thanks for highlighting an excellent location effect I owned (Inner Secrets) but had overlooked.

Funny that I should come across this thread. I was only thinking about 'Emotional reaction' just yesterday looking for old ideas for a strong inpromptu effect with a specttaor shuffled deck. This one stood out for me (as did 'Thought Transposed' and 'Out of sight out of mind'). Just got to work out how to make the reveal in a surprising manner.

I usually stand up, walk backward a bit, fan through the cards....slowly draw out my card....and hold it above my head. I say "madam, what was the name of your card"...they say it...almost immediately I flip it around (with a snap if I can manage it). Don't say a word after that, just let them experience it...very powerful in my experience

That sounds good. The strength of the effect for me is that the spectator of course gets to shuffle the deck at the onset.What I am thinking of doing myself is to wait until the spectator has buried his pile in the middle of the main deck and has completed the customary 'complete cuts'.Then to emphasis the fact that the cards really are chaotically mixed I might undertake a purposefully clumsy 'haymow' false shuffle with the deck face down in my hands appearing to further throughly mix the cards.This false shuffle only achieves a further cut but obviously does little else to the order of the cards.

Then I might ask the spectator to carefully spread the deck face up in a ribbon fan so that all the card indexes are showing. As soon as I am able to obtain the necessary information I immediately turn my back.I ask the spectator to simply look at their card in the spread out deck.I pretend to link in to their mind stream and together we visualise the card. First the color, then the suit and finally the card identity.

The only other thing I might do is to make sure that when I demonstrate cutting the deck and bringing the cards up to my chest that I keep the cards as squared up as possible spreading the bottom face cards as little as possible to do the necessary business.

On that last point Andy, I think I would be casual with the spreading. They usually assume you really are demonstrating it and really don't think anything of it. Sometimes it can be tricky after that because they want to pull a card right out of the deck...that's my only sticky point.

Did this the other day at a jewelry store and the guy there is now totally convinced I can wrist-read people. It was amazing.

If you look at the top of the page where I was originally going to do a story trick, it was because I didn't believe there could be any spiritualism left in our society. Looks like jewelry guy proves me wrong.

Could someone please remind me which volume of the Vernon Chronicles Emotional Reaction is in? Also, since I think I may be missing this volume, can anyone remind me, how many volumes are in the Vernon Chronicles? Thanks.

It is not in Vernon Chronicles but in the Inner Secrets book.

Yes definitely in the Inner Secrets book as the book is open to the effect on the table in front of me.

For me, I wanted to move away from the holding of the wrist to detect emotional reaction. I wanted the focus to be on thinking of a strong emotional moment in their life and to place the palm of their hand on the faceup card as they do so , with the premise being that just for a short time a small trace of the emotion will invest itself in the card and this will fade to nothing in just a few minutes. In addtion when they were looking through the cards , I asked them if they decided on a heart to think of an event where the feeling of love was very strong , for clubs which look like 3 leaf clover to think of a moment of great luck or fortune, diamonds - treasure - think of something they would purchase if they had all the money in the world - spades a moment which brought them sadness.

Going through the deck quickly and locating thier card I can first reveal which of four emotions they chose.

Second time through the deck - locate their card.

If I am feeling lucky will let them shuffle the deck overhand before it is given back to me over 85% chance the trick will succeed still.