Ascension

THE BLURB:
Imagine...

After establishing yourself as a person with some unusual
intuitive skills, you say you'd like to put those skills to
a real, measurable test. In order to do that, you need some
sort of benchmark to compare them against. There are various
items that could serve this purpose, from tarot cards to
personality profiles. But, you explain, because you like to
set the bar high, you've chosen the divinatory tool which,
throughout the several-thousand-year history of esoteric
practice, has generally been regarded as the most trusted
source of metaphysical wisdom and insight into the human
condition: a horoscope mini-magazine, direct from the
supermarket checkout counter.

You give such a magazine to a volunteer, pointing out that
it deals with four distinct areas of life: love, money,
health, and leisure. You then turn your back and ask your
volunteer to look up her horoscope -- either for the current
month (if it's far along enough to get a good sense of how
it's turning out), or for the previous month (if it's too
soon to tell how this month is going yet). In either case,
she silently reads her horoscope. When she's finished, you
ask her to consider how accurate it seems in hindsight. She
does, and arrives at a "percentage score" for the magazine's
accuracy, which you write down. No matter what it is, you
say you think you can do better.

You then turn to face the volunteer again, and proceed to
give her a disarmingly accurate and insightful description
of her personality and her current situation in life. This
is no mere "cold" reading, as it contains a wealth of
specific information that you had no way of knowing,
including personal details about her character, actions, and
circumstances, delivered confidently and unequivocally. You
then wrap things up by revealing her zodiac sign, with no
pumping or guesswork. With that, not only have you done much
better than the magazine, but you've given the volunteer an
intimate, inexplicable experience that she'll never forget.

ASCENSION really is just that clean, direct and strong. It's
a system that uses layers of methods to deliver, in a
completely untraceable way, the most powerful and memorable
information that we as mentalists can reveal: personal
details about someone's life. Furthermore, it does so in
real time, with no writing, no setup, no assistance, no
pre-show, and no stooges (instant or otherwise). How you use
that information is then up to your own imagination.

"This is not just a 'new effect,' it's freak'n dynamite!" --
Craig Browning

"Joshua has taken some clever ideas and brilliantly weaved
them into a complete and impressive reading system. Not only
are the principles well hidden in the workings of the
routine, but it's also shockingly easy to do. Joshua has put
an amazing amount of thought and work into the routine and
the creation of the realistic looking horoscope mini-mags
which do virtually all the work for you. Even if you have no
experience doing a reading, this system will automatically
make you look like an expert reader as you deftly
demonstrate that you're better than the magazine
astrologers. I highly recommend this ingenious product."
-- Jheff, Marketplace of the Mind

MY COMMENTS:
First off, I'm sure that quite a few mentalists may be a
bit disappointed that I am helping Joshua commercialize
this product. It's such a clever and invaluable package
that I don't blame mentalists at all for wanting to keep
this reading system among themselves. But that's just
it. Because it's a reading system, it will stay among
mentalists. Trust me. Mental magicians won't do this.
You're not divining serial numbers, predicting headlines, or
staying one step ahead of that cup-covered spike. You're
giving an honest to goodness reading here and, for many
performers, this just isn't their style. Also, being as
how this is very clever, Joshua deserves some limelight
for its creation and some financial reward, too. Although
he'll probably get more of the former than the latter.

After reading the blurb above, which details the routine,
you'll notice that all you use is a pocket-sized horoscope
book and a pen and paper. That's it. And why is this
reading easy? Because once you have a participant's
"percentage score" of how accurate the horoscope
book is, it is diabolically easy to figure out the zodiac
sign and know how to be amazingly more accurate
than what is printed in the horoscope book. (Yeah, I
know the word "diabolically" is overused in ad blurbs,
but, believe me, it fits perfectly here.)

There is a little memorization involved, but you can
definitely use a crib. Joshua has come up with an extremely
well-thought out set of mnemonics which he built into the
system. So remembering this isn't too difficult. With the
crib, though, you can start doing it almost immediately
(after you thoroughly script and rehearse, of course!) and
eventually not need the crib anymore.

A final concern you may have is with its use of astrology.
Personally, I've never bought into in it, but you don't have
to in order to use this. Read the blurb and you'll see that
Joshua's presentation involves demonstrating that your
instincts are more accurate than any astrologers'. I like
that. However, you can certainly compare your astrological
knowledge to that which is found in a supermarket horoscope
book. Or another ability can be compared. It's up to you.

You will notice when you go to his website that Joshua is
selling a complete package which includes the CD-Rom with
the graphic files on it, a printed instruction booklet, and
the four horoscope books; the e-book with the instructions
and graphics to make your own horoscope books; and the four
books separately, if you need them. Please note that you
don't need to use all four books during a
performance/reading. Each book covers three months of the
year, so you will use all four over the course of a year,
but not all at the same time.

In any case, I do highly recommend you get the entire
package. Making the horoscope books is definitely time
consuming. Also, you'll be ready to go much more
quickly.

To wrap up my comments, I'll just repeat the blurb that
that I sent Joshua to use. Or, you can ignore reading
it again and simply go straight to Joshua's site and
order it.

Oh, yeah, and tell him that Jheff sent you.

If you would like to obtain the downloadable e-book which contains PDF files for making the books yourself ($40) or duplicate sets of the books ($30 each) then use the link below.