The heart-shaped cards, complete with a transparent
heart-shaped plastic container, are available from our on-line
source mentioned in the article. You don't NEED to use the
heart-shaped cards, but they make the effect unique and special
for a Valentine's Day Demonstration of your Wizard powers.
Your spectators will find that they can't really shuffle
heart shaped cards very well, so like the Tarot deck, mixing is
the preferred way to randomize the deck. Place the cards on a
table and show someone how to mix them around. When the head
mixer feels the cards have been thoroughly randomized, she should
gather the cards into a deck, place them back in the box face
down and put the lid on the cards. Then the container of cards is
handed to a second person.
The second person is instructed to carefully take the deck of
cards from the container and cut the heart pack into two halves.
One of the heart packs is picked up and a single card is secretly
chosen from that half of the deck. The card is shown to people
the spectator trusts from the heart. Then the card is cut back
into the deck and the deck is once again placed into the
container and finally handed back to the Wizard.
The Wizard points out that every card in a deck of playing
cards has a "soul mate." The seven of hearts is soul
mate to the seven of diamonds. The three of clubs is soul mate to
the three of spades... and so on. You, the Wizard, will attempt
to locate the soul mate of the card that the spectator chose by
using your special powers of divination. You spread the deck out
on the table face up. Let us imagine that the spectator freely
chose the queen of hearts. The spectators see the Wizard pass
right by the queen of diamonds and settle instead on some other
card. That card is placed face down on the table with a confident
smile. "I have found your card's soul mate," says the
Wizard.
"Not so," said the spectator. "My card is
right here." She points to the queen of hearts (for
example).
"Push your card with your finger right over here beneath
the card I chose as your card's soul mate," says the Wizard.
"Now flip over the card I selected."
At that moment the card is seen to have changed into the
queen of diamonds, or the correct soul mate of the card freely
chosen by the spectator.
The knowledgeable card worker will know many ways to make the
revelation even more magical, such as performing a snap change to
change the wrong card into the right card, and so on. Feel free
to improvise.
What the article provides is the method of knowing exactly
what card was chosen and where it is in the deck after two
different spectators do all the shuffling and choosing.
Two more bonus effects are given that take advantage of the
special Valentine shaped playing cards shown above.
