The Wizard shows his collection of charms...
good luck charms like a rabbit's foot, horseshoe, four leaf
clover... bad luck charms like a broken mirror, black cat,
tombstone ... protection charms like a chain of garlic, crosses,
pentacle ... and love charms like hearts, Cupid's arrows, and
flower petals. The Wizard also shows some computer printed
business cards on which he has printed symbols or pictures of the
charms, and another set of cards on which he has printed phrases
describing the types of charms "Good Luck," "Bad
Luck," "Protection Charm," and "Love
Charm." All of these cards are mixed together thoroughly and
spread out onto a table. Three people from the audience each
choose a charm from one of the four groups. For example, onlooker
"A" chooses a horseshoe charm from the Good Luck
charms. The Good Luck charms are put aside and onlooker B chooses
(for example) Cupid's Arrow from the Love Charms. The Love Charms
are retired and the final onlooker "C" chooses (for
example) the pentacle charm for Protection. Now a fourth onlooker
is selected randomly from the audience and that person's job is
to slide two face down cards from the table over to an open space
on the table top, where the Wizard picks up the two cards, places
them in a coin envelope and hands them to one of the spectators
without looking at the cards. Two more cards are placed in an
envelope for spectator "B", and two more cards for
spectator "C."
Now to see if the charms really work, says the Wizard. He
asks onlooker "A" to open her envelope. She chose the
horseshoe charm and inside the envelope she finds two cards- one
with a picture of a horseshoe, and the other card simply says
"Good Luck!" Similarly, each spectator finds a picture
of the chosen charm and the word phrase that matches it inside
each envelope.
