The star sign divination is a staple of almost every mentalist's repertoire. Despite 'only being a one in twelve', it hits with audiences. You can see a small amount the impact in the following clip from 'The Wheel' where the contestant guesses the presenter's star sign: The Wheel Star Sign Clip
There are several approaches to the star sign divination, from zodiac cards, a pamphlet, through to some clever logic based guessed. Then there is use of an anagram.
Most people would have come across Alain Nu's anagram, or Peter Turner's, and these are useful to have in your back pocket, but I know several mentalists that favour other methods than an anagram due to the number of letters required to be thrown out. Presented correctly, I believe anagrams can be a powerful tool, but ultimately the more letters you throw out, the less impressive it becomes - the audience can begin playing along and work it out at the same time. Of course this requires some mental gymnastics on your audience's part, but if your audience has guessed the thought before you do, it becomes less impressive. Really, you want to throw out as few letters as possible, having as little process as possible. The more direct, the better.
This is what I realised a few years ago, so I looked to streamline the star sign anagram, aiming to throw out as few letters as possible. Along with it, came several methods to filter words cleverly - one of which I love to this day is discovering whether a letter repeats in the word they are thinking of. I do this in a hanging statement like fashion:
"Spell the word in your mind letter for letter for me now... Okay, interesting... be honest, was there a letter that repeated in your mind as you did that?"
If yes, then I sometimes even follow up with: *"And was it the first letter that you repeated in your mind?"*, which filters the options down even further!
The subtle reframe to close this loop, and make the participant believe you haven't gained any information in this process is as follows: "Okay so I think if you repeat each letter in your mind over and over again as you spell it then I will be best able to pick up on the thoughts. So think of that first letter, and repeat it over and over... now the second... okay good."
You gain a lot with this. This isn't a part of Streamlining the Signs, but is the start of how you can cleverly filter out banks of words in other ways than anagramming every letter. Generally, I look as far away from letters as I can, instead approaching the quality of the thing being thought of and fishing with this instead.
In terms of presentation, I have found that star sign divinations come across as their strongest in impact when they are either out of the blue, or when you seemingly do not know the category of the thought. This is something a good friend Jack Thomson does with his anagrams, forcing the category using something like Digital Force Bag (or even a stack of cards/Sven pad of thoughts). The audience and participant don't know that you know the category, and therefore when you nail their thought, it is more impressive and hides the anagram away in the presentation (rather than it seeming wholly like the method).
Other tips I have, is to gather a star sign in advance of doing your anagram (I like to use Thought Backtracking, a technique of mine that is an impromptu additional information billet), and immediately after divining a star sign with an anagram/propless method, immediately go on to directly reveal the star sign you harvested earlier. This kills the previously used methods.
Finally, a presentation I like to use for star sign divinations is to ask if the participant ever reads their horoscope and finds it doesn't relate to them. I listen to their answer, and ask them to focus on the star sign that they feel best suits them, not necessarily the sign they were born under. Chances are they will think of their actual star sign, but giving the option opens it out to make it seem as if they could be thinking of any star sign. I will include a reading in with this to push away from the method used and instead draw out their star sign from their qualities. If it turns out they aren't thinking of their actual sign, you could even one ahead on the sign to reveal their true star sign, and the one they believe best suits them.
Mitch Kettlewell
Mentalist
