Written In The Stars

Your participants each perform a ritual based on a gypsy psychic technique resulting in them finding their star sign under impossible conditions.

Each person who wants to take part will need twelve individual horoscopes torn from a magazine or all twelve star signs written onto individual billets.

You begin by telling a completely untrue story about how gypsy psychics would get sitters to go through a spelling ritual with a stack of questions one would want to ask of a dead relative. The process would involve the client spelling out certain pieces of information relating to the departed, this process would serve as a mixing up of the question cards culminating in a selection that would be deemed to be something the departed would want to be asked.

You ask everyone to mix/shuffle their pile of horoscopes as you explain that today we are going to try a slightly lighter-hearted version of the ritual using the horoscopes. Ask everyone to hold their stack of horoscopes with the written side facing them. Instruct them to look through to find the horoscope for their star sign and bring it to the front of the stack (closest to themselves) and read it. Once they have finished they should turn their stack face down on their palm. You are now ready to begin walking them through the ritual.

You start by asking one person if they believe there is any truth behind the fortunes written in their horoscope. They are going to answer in one of three ways; Yes, No or Maybe (they may use other specific words but the sentiment will be one of those three). We are going to relabel their choice regardless of what they say and the spelling process will begin. The method requires them to begin by spelling a five letter word. So depending on the answer given to the question we are going to relabel it like this:

Yes (positive responses)

“So you believe there is some TRUTH in the horoscopes. So can everybody take their face down pile of horoscopes and deal one off of the top, to the table, for each letter of the word truth…T…R…U…T…H and finally drop the remaining pile in your hand on top”. You fit your actions to your words as a demonstration and wait for them to do the same. Now you point out that “Had you said you didn’t believe in the power of the horoscopes we would have all spelled the word LIES and everyone's pile would be in a totally different order right now”.

No (negative responses)

“So you believe it to all be FALSE, completely fabricated nonsense. So can everybody take their face down pile of horoscopes and deal one off of the top, to the table, for each letter of the word false…F…A…L…S…E and finally drop the remaining pile in your hand on top”. You fit your actions to your words as a demonstration and wait for them to do the same. Now you point out that “Had you said you did believe in the power of the horoscopes we would have all spelled the word TRUE and everyone's pile would be in a totally different order right now”.

Maybe (neutral responses)

“So you’re on the fence, you feel that MAYBE there is something to it all. So can everybody take their face down pile of horoscopes and deal one off of the top, to the table, for each letter of the word maybe…M…A…Y…B…E and finally drop the remaining pile in your hand on top”. You fit your actions to your words as a demonstration and wait for them to do the same. Now you point out that “Had you said you did believe or didn’t believe in the power of the horoscopes we would have had tol spell the word YES or NO and everyone's pile would be in a totally different order right now”.

Instruct everyone to pick up their entire pile face down on their palm ready for the next phase of the spelling ritual. “Now everyone, spell the word MONTH, deal one off of the top, to the table, for each letter of the word month…M…O…N…T…H and finally drop the remaining pile in your hand on top of the tabled pile”.

Everyone does this.

Each phase follows the same handling for the spelling (one piece off the top dealt to the table for each letter and the remaining pile dropped on top of the new tabled pile)

Instruct everyone to pick up their entire pile face down on their palm ready for the next phase “Here’s where it gets interesting, you are each going to spell the month you were born like M.A.Y. or J.U.L.Y, but you’ve got the opportunity here to be honest and spell the correct month or try to mess with the zodiac gods and spell any other month that you like. Then obviously drop the remaining pile on top”.

Everyone does this.

Now you repeat Phase two but using the word BIRTHDAY (no dishonest spelling allowed here, just tell them to spell it). And drop the rest on top.

“Now you are going to spell the date in the month you were born like O.N.E, F.O.U.R.T.E.E.N. or T.W.E.N.T.Y E.I.G.H.T. as examples. But again you’ve got the opportunity to mess with those zodiac gods and spell any other date that you like and drop the remaining pile on top”

“Now comes the final phase. Everyone please spell the word HOROSCOPE, dropping the remaining pile on top”.

If the procedure has been followed correctly everyone will now have their own horoscope face down on top of the pile. (I could explain how, but it’s easier to just accept that it just works). If you have been using the same magazine pages as everyone else you can peek at the back of the top horoscope on their pile and know what their star sign is and reveal it before revealing they found their sign. This would be the simple case of remembering the words or images on the page backing the horoscope page.

Phases Three and Five are irrelevant as long as they are not spelling anything longer than twelve letters and no shorter than three letters. But the other phases are specific. You can substitute the words or change to other languages but you must think of words that are of the same length as TRUTH, MONTH, BIRTHDAY and HOROSCOPE for those phases.