The Routine

You show your spectator twelve cards, dealing six to her and keeping the remaining six for yourself. Each card has a picture of a voodoo doll on it, and each doll is seen to have a needle pushed into a different part of it — one needle is piercing the doll’s head, another its left arm, another its heart, another its right arm, another its left leg and another its right leg.

Placing a card in front of you to serve as a prediction, you tell your spectator that you are going to divine the choice she is about to make. Your spectator chooses any card from her packet and places it alongside yours. Before you reveal your prediction, you display each of the cards you have left, one at a time. Your spectator can see that her card is not among them.

You now reveal that you knew the choice your spectator would make from the outset. When you turn your prediction over, your card matches hers.

the props

• Seven ‘regular’ Voodoo cards (two of which are identical)

• Five double-faced cards (five different faces and five identical backs)

the MethodYou have twelve cards in total. Before your performance, order them as follows (Card 1 lowermost, Head side facing up):

i.e. reading from left to right: Head/Heart double-facer; Left Arm/Heart double-facer; regular Heart card; Right Arm/Heart double-facer; Left Leg/Heart double-facer; Right Leg/Heart double-facer; regular Head card; regular Left Arm card; regular Heart card; regular Right Arm card; regular Left Leg card; regular Right Leg card.

The regular cards are marked — this means that you can be a step ahead of your spectator after she places her selection on the table.

1 : Head 2 : Left Arm 4 : Right Arm3 : Heart 5 : Left Leg 4 : Right Leg

Bring the twelve-card packet out of your pocket (Card 12 uppermost, Right Leg side facing up) and deal the top six (regular) cards to your spectator. Keep the remaining six cards for yourself (this leaves you with five double-facers and one card with a back — the Voodoo Heart card).

At this point in the routine, I like to position the regular Voodoo Heart card (the only one with a back) on the bottom of my packet — this means that I can hold the cards in my hand safely, without the spectator being able to see the additional faces. It also means that I can casually flash the bottom of the packet, allowing the spectator to see a back.

To bring the regular card into position on the bottom, you could just cut your packet directly beneath the Voodoo Heart card, or you could ask your spectator to count her cards with you. You count yours by spreading the top four cards from one hand to the other, before placing these onto the table and counting off the fifth and sixth cards on top of these — the regular Voodoo Heart card thus finishes lowermost.

You’re now going to make your prediction, placing it face down on the table (use the Voodoo Heart card here; since it’s the only card in your packet with a back, you won’t have any trouble remembering that it’s the one you need to place face down…).

Since you’ve just placed the Voodoo Heart card on the bottom of the packet, it should be easy for you to locate it. After you’ve tabled your prediction, invite your spectator to choose any card she wants and place it face down opposite yours. Because of the marking system, you now know which card your spectator has chosen.

There are two possibilities here — either your spectator has tabled the target card (the Voodoo Heart) or she has chosen one of the other five cards.

If she has tabled the Voodoo Heart card, you don’t need to do anything! All that remains is for you to reveal your prediction… And await your applause, champagne and confetti!

If your spectator has tabled one of the other five cards, don’t worry — take the time to read what follows, and you’ll see everything’s still very easy. Let’s suppose your spectator has chosen the Left Leg card. Reintroduce your packevt, and as you run through the cards in it and table them one at a time, just make sure that you save the double-faced Left Leg/Voodoo Heart card for last.

Before you display this final card, secretly flip it over, so that your spectator sees only the Voodoo Heart side.

You now need to perform the Turnover Switch invented by the Japanese magician Shigeo Takagi (see facing page).

It’s a very simple — and a very natural — move. With the double-facer (D) in your right hand (Voodoo Heart side showing, Left Leg side lowermost), slide it beneath the regular-backed prediction card that you started with (P; Fig. 1). When your right thumb contacts the back of the prediction card (P), use your thumb to drag this card to the right (Fig. 2) while simultaneously rotating your right wrist (bringing your hand from a palm-up to a palm-down position) to reveal the Left Leg side of the double-facer (D; Fig. 3).

Finish by leaving the Left Leg double-facer tabled in front of your spectator and placing card P on top of the packet that you previously set aside.