Magician vs mentalist: what is the difference?

To answer this properly, we should start by defining a magician.

"Magician" tends to get used as an umbrella term covering what a magician does and what an illusionist does. Often that umbrella stretches to cover mentalists and hypnotists too, which is not really correct. It is a bit like calling a builder a plumber. They may both work on houses, they may use some of the same tools, but the trades are vastly different.

Magicians and illusionists

Illusionists are the performers known for large props, boxes and stage illusions. Disappearing from one point and appearing at another, levitations, sawing a person in half, and the various other indignities visited upon an otherwise lovely assistant. David Copperfield and Criss Angel are two of the better known names.

Magicians tend to perform routines that pack into a suitcase, or into their pockets. Props or sleight of hand, performed as cabaret, parlour, or roving close-up work.

The catch is that plenty of performers do both, which is where the confusion sets in. Dynamo and David Blaine sit in that overlap.

So where does a mentalist fit?

There is effectively a sliding scale between mental magicians and mentalists.

A mental magician is a magician performing tricks designed to look like mentalism. A mentalist has a specifically honed set of skills and an actual working understanding of psychology. A mentalist may occasionally use a piece of mental magic to enhance a routine, but that is a choice, not the foundation. The foundation is training across a range of disciplines:

• Memory — advanced memory technique.
• Body language — reading people accurately and at speed.
• Sleight of hand — every good mentalist understands magic and misdirection, whether or not they use it.
• Influence — verbal and linguistic influence.
• Hypnosis — it is part of the toolbox and part of the training, which is a separate matter from whether it appears in a show.
• And, of course, a personality, and the ability to actually perform.

Examples of mentalists would be Derren Brown, Phillip Escoffey, or myself.

What that means if you are booking

Book a mentalist and you are getting the lot. What appears to be mind reading, which lands at any event you care to name. Predictions that should not be possible. Shows that are genuinely baffling rather than cheesy.

Mentalism is where the audience has moved. Old-hat magic with tired gags and the same tricks people have seen since childhood is a hard sell to a room of adults. Intelligent, funny, impossible-looking performance is not.

If you want the difference in one line: a magician shows you something impossible happening in his hands. A mentalist makes it happen in your head.