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Above and Beyond Cold Reading
A workshop by Paul Bell
Sunday 10th October 2010
Reviewed by Jon Holt
I attended this workshop because I had previously purchased the book ‘Reader of
Minds’ that was written by Paul, which I had enjoyed thoroughly. I must say that
I approached this event with quite a lot of trepidation for two reasons. The
first was that Paul Bell also goes by the rather embarrassing name of ‘Voodini’
and secondly, the cost of the workshop was only £18, that seemed suspiciously
low. I am delighted to say that my misgivings were completely misplaced!
We met at midday on a sunny Sunday day in the basement of Treadwells bookshop in
London. Paul turned out to be a witty and engaging individual who clearly knows
his field very well indeed. He started off by telling us about how he started
off doing Tarot readings as a youngster, where he was convinced that he had the
‘gift’ before abandoning it when he started a family, only to re-discover it
years later. Fortunately, when he re-discovered Tarot reading, he had also got
into mentalism and magic and saw his ‘talent’ for what it was - cold reading.
Before we go any further, it is important to point out that Paul does not
dismiss psychic ability, mediumship or clairvoyance altogether, but states that
he is yet to be convinced by anything that he has seen, and he has seen a lot!
Paul introduced the subject of cold reading and gave us a number of definitions
of terms, such as ‘hot reading’, ‘warm reading’, ‘cold reading’ and so on. He
gave us examples of how it is done, what key phrases are used, the techniques
that mediums use to gain information, crow-barring hits from misses, the use of
stooges (interestingly, the definition of ‘stooge’ used in cold reading is
different from our usual definition in magic and mentalism) and many other
aspects of the subject.
Paul gave us sample readings using the people attendees and even had one of us
provide a stunningly-accurate reading on someone just by looking at them.
Paul then went on to describe how to make money out of cold reading, talking
about psychic fairs, individual readings and tarot parties. I must admit that
this part had little relevance to me, but it was fascinating none-the-less.
Also, much to my relief, he was also quick to explain his rather cheesy
sobriquet and he had his reasons so I think that we can forgive him.
Overall, I highly recommend this workshop. At just £18 and including a copy of
his book ‘Reader of Minds’ there really is no reason not to attend. I travelled
across from South Wales and even factoring the travel costs, this was still
value for money. I shall be certainly looking out for more of Paul’s
publications and workshops in the future. I found the initial link for this
course on MagicWeek, which led me to his website:
www.readerofminds.co.uk,
so keep watching MagicWeek for future dates.
© Jon Holt, member of Psycrets, October 2010