Equivocation is a technique by which a magician appears to have intended a particular outcome, when in actuality the outcome is one of several alternative outcomes.
In each of these examples, the effectiveness of the equivocation involves the "information gap" between what the spectator actually knows and what the spectator thinks he knows. In the magician's force the spectator does not know anything about what will happen to the two cards he initially selects. However, the spectator thinks that he is merely making a free choice in an otherwise scripted sequence of moves. In the effect of the pre-prepared envelope, the spectator thinks he knows that the envelope involves a prediction, but he does not actually know that the envelope in fact involves three predictions.
Equivocation tends to lose its effectiveness if repeated in the same context, since the spectator gains more information from one performance to the next, thereby shrinking this information gap. For example, a spectator may wonder why the prediction was on the face of the envelope in one performance, but the prediction was on a card inside the envelope on a second performance.
Equivocation can be employed more generally. For example, if the magician intends to perform a trick requiring a spectator to select a forced card, but for one reason or another the spectator does not pick the card that the magician attempted to force, the magician may simply perform another trick that does not require the selection of the forced card.
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Magician's Choice
Magician's Choice is a principle that magicians use when they want a spectator to choose a particular item, say a card, dove, or method of punishment. The magician pretends that a free choice is being offered, but really the spectator has no choice at all.
Some methods of forcing a choice between two items:
The magician holds one item out and holds the other back under a hand, vase, or other item
The magician shows two items, but one is glued to the table
Two items are offered but one smells really, really bad or is cold, slimy, and foul to the touch (the audience will not notice this).
Alternatively, the incorrect item may emit a mild electric shock, or the magician may sneeze on the item that is not to be picked
If the wrong item is picked, the magician says, "Really? Are you sure? I certainly wouldn't have picked that one. Are you completely sure?" until the right item is selected
If the wrong item is picked, the magician says, "Actually, that's not such a great choice. Here, let me choose for you."
If the spectator appears to be moving toward the incorrect item, the magician slowly shakes his head and says, "tut, tut, tut" in a half whisper.
Alternatively, if the spectator sees the magician as adversary, the magician may make a greedy, hand rubbing gesture and grin widely if the incorrect item is reached for, causing the tricky spectator to switch choices.
The magician chooses an item for he spectator, based on the spectator's "aura"
No matter which item the spectator indicates, the magician hands over the "right" one. If the spectator complains, the magician says,
"Sorry, it's too late to change your mind now."
These methods are, with obvious variation, applicable to larger numbers of objects
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A magician must always be in control while appearing to not be in control, and to make that work he or she must perfect the “Magician’s Choice.” This is not a trick so much as a tool, or even more accurately, an idea, one that will come in handy for a lifetime of magic.
The Effect
The magician lays out four cards on a table and asks the spectator to choose two of them. The spectator touches two, and the magician says “Fine, we will use these two” and discards the others. He then asks the spectator to chose one, and he does, after which the magician says “That is your choice, so we will discard this one” and does so. The remaining card, which seems to have been freely selected by the spectator, is named by the magician before it is turned over, and when it is the magician is proven correct.
The Secret
The secret to the Magician’s Choice is that it is a false choice, one which the magician only appears to be giving to the spectator. The magician is in control of the outcome of the choice from the beginning.
Materials
The Magician’s Choice can be done with any number of trick, so the materials will vary based on the trick being performed.
Preparation
A complete understanding of the Magician’s Choice concept is required, and practice in at least one trick.
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Magician's Choice..
I consider this one of the most important tools a good magicians can have in his repertoire of magic..
The Magician's Choice is a 'force' that allows you to control the card that a spectator picks. By carefully controlling a 'process of elimination', you will end up with exactly the card YOU want the spectator to have..
I will try to keep this simple..
There are no hard and true rules for a magician's choice. I sometimes make the rules up as I go, since the results are the same regardless.
Let's say I want you to have the five of hearts. This may be to fufill a prediction I have wrote beforehand, or to reveal a card chosen by a spectator.
Example:
As I look through the deck I ask you to name a card, any card. You name the five of hearts and I quickly locate the FOH, hand it to you to examine, and then drop it back on top of the deck. I perform a FALSE CUT, leaving the FOH on top. Now, I shuffle the deck several times, being careful to leave the five of hearts on top. Sometimes I deliberately get a card or two in front of the five on the last shuffle...
If I know that the five is the second card down, for example, I would show you the bottom card and ask you if that is your card. You say NO. I show you the top card and ask if that is your card. Again, you say No, and I stick it into the deck as I say something like " Well, we know your card is not on top or bottom, but is actually somewhere 'lost' in the deck".
It's not....
I know that it is now back on top of the deck.. or perhaps the second card down. It doesn't matter as long as I know where it is...
Let's assume it's the second card from the top.
I would cut the deck into four stacks, and lay them out in a row. I would now begin the force...
With the four stacks in front of you, I would ask you to pick two stacks. If you started to pick a stack up, I would just say " You don't have to pick them up... just touch two stacks".
If you picked two stacks that do not contain your chosen card, I would pick up those two stacks and say " Good choice.. we will eliminate these..", as I pick them up and sit them to one side.
If you picked one of the stacks that contains your chosen card, I would pick those two up, making sure that I pick up the one with your card first, so I would continue to know exactly where your card was located. I would push the other two stacks aside..
Either way.. I end up with half of the deck in my hand, and your chosen card on top ( or close to it..)
I would go through the same process once again, using the half of the deck in my hand to form three or four small stacks. Keep and/or eliminate stacks until you are down to one stack - the stack containing the chosen card.
At this point, I would probably lay all the remaining cards out on the table, being careful to keep my eye on your card, and let you start picking individual cards. If there are ten cards laying on the table, I would ask you to pick five cards. Again, either keeping or eliminating cards, depending on what I need to do..
If there were five cards left, I would ask you to pick three. After eliminating the cards that are useless, I will now have either two or three cards on the table, depending on whether your card was among the cards you picked.
If there are three cards left, I would ask you to pick two so I can end up with only two cards on the table. I like to eliminate all the cards except two.
When I ask you to pick one last card and you choose the other card, I push that card to one side and say "OK, we're left with only one card..." . If you pick your card, I say " You could have picked this card, but you didn't.." as I turn the odd card over..
Now I'm ready to reveal the card I have carefully 'forced' you to pick through what is called the 'Magician's Force'..
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Misdirection
One of the most powerful weapons in a magician's arsenal is misdirection. In fact, the only thing that helps a magician get away with trickery more than a good bit of misdirection is an audience that's been drinking heavily.
For example, let's say that the magician is performing an escape in which he is manacled naked to a chair, doused in gasoline, and set on fire, and has to free himself before he can jump into a nearby pool of water. Let's also say that, in order to escape, the magician needs to grab a key hidden on a nearby table and use it to unlock the shackles, and that he has to do it in a fraction of a second to avoid being burned alive. Well, the magician doesn't want anyone to see him get the key because that would ruin the magic of the moment. So what the magician does is arrange with an assistant (a lovely young woman who is clearly 9 months pregnant) to stand on the far side of the stage and, as soon as the magician is set on fire, put her hand on her belly and make a worried look. The audience will, of course, have sympathy for the pregnant assistant and, seeing that she's concerned that her baby might be ready to arrive, will be concentrating on her instead of on the burning magician. This gives the magician plenty of time to fumble for the key through screams of agony with nobody the wiser.
Misdirection comes in many shapes and forms. It can be a "mistakenly" open fly, the sudden violent illness of someone in the audience, or a gunshot from the theater's Presidential booth. It can even be an "accidental" dropping of a deck of cards and subsequent "ruining" of a trick that wasn't going to work out anyway.
One of the most common bits of misdirection is a shapely assistant in a revealing costume. There's a saying amongst magicians that the less an assistant is wearing, the more you can get away with. The problem with relying on this saying is that it can lead to overconfidence on the part of the magician. This is why it's not uncommon after a late-night Las Vegas magic show in which gorgeous assistants are completely topless to hear a man say something like, "Wow -- did you see how he made that rabbit appear out of that chest?" To which his wife responds, "What are you talking about? It was a hat and the rabbit was in it the whole time."
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The magician indeed is powerful amnipulator of the mind, WE must all posess such quality as KWML dr paul describes. Very intersting to know.
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References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation_(magic)
Hay, Henry. Cyclopedia of Magic. 1949. ISBN 0-486-21808-2
Wilson, Mark. Complete Course in Magic. 1975. ISBN 0-7624-1455-3
Theodore Annemann. 202 Methods of Forcing. 1933. ASIN B00086ITAO
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