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00:00 *music*
00:04 If you want to creep people out with your magic, this is the trick to do.
00:08 It's called soul paper. You can do it
00:12 with items that you've got in your house right now. And it looks like this.
00:16 You guys have heard the phrase "soul sucking"? Soul sucking?
00:20 That's when something's like really over. My soul's still here. So I don't know.
00:24 For now. The phrase comes from a real place, which is
00:28 weird. It's real. Witch doctor ceremonies. What the witch doctors
00:32 do is they, when someone dies, they light the body
00:36 on fire. You could see the ashes rise
00:40 after the body burned. And then they would start to fall down
00:44 and he would just suck them up. He would absorb them
00:48 into his body. I'm going to show you guys that one right now. *laughter*
00:52 I'm not allowed to pet your flat-limbed mom. Magic was to be joyful, now I'm afraid.
00:56 I'm going to ask you to think of someone that you've known who is
01:00 no longer with us. Just think of their initials.
01:04 Okay? Okay. So right down there. And then just show the
01:08 camera. I don't want to see it. So now that we have
01:12 the initials going, are you worried about Rick really
01:16 sucking your soul right now? I'm extremely worried about this. Ready? Yes.
01:20 Step into your office, will ya? Alright. So the next step
01:24 is to dissolve the pieces.
01:28 Soul sucking comes in place. Because of the ashes.
01:32 Soul sucking is going to happen in a minute. I'm going to ask you to stir it up like this.
01:36 Right up there. And then you're going to put the mirror on top of it. So the mirror goes on top.
01:40 I'm going to turn around in case one of those pieces becomes visible. Put the mirror on it
01:44 when you're done. So mix those up good. And then just put the mirror on.
01:48 And let me know after you're done. Okay? I'm not a doctor, a witch doctor,
01:52 a bartender, but does this look like a good stirring right now?
01:56 Put the mirror on top of the glass.
02:00 So the last question. The person you're thinking of.
02:04 Was this a male or a female? It was a male.
02:08 [music]
02:12 [music]
02:16 Things are getting interesting now.
02:20 [music]
02:24 [music]
02:28 [music]
02:32 [music]
02:36 Arby.
02:40 Yeah. Who was it?
02:44 My uncle. Your uncle.
02:48 Oh my gosh.
02:52 [music]
02:56 [music]
03:00 Ew. MS. MS.
03:04 Is it MS? Yes. He ate the ashes.
03:08 [music]
03:12 [music]
03:16 The best part was when it burned and just...
03:20 [music]
03:24 Hello my friends. This is Rick Lax again. And first of all,
03:28 thank you. Thank you for downloading Soul Paper. I really do
03:32 appreciate the business. Thank you. I hope you like it.
03:36 Decades ago, Tannin's Magic
03:40 sold this red rocket paper. And there's an Asian
03:44 company that took it and is now making a
03:48 copy version of it. But it would be this red paper
03:52 that you would roll up and you would light it on fire and it would
03:56 go up a little bit. You catch it in your hand and you turn it back into the red paper.
04:00 And you would buy this from Tannin's and then you would have to buy
04:04 the refills. And what's nice about the trick you're going to learn right now
04:08 is you can do it entirely with objects that you can find
04:12 in your own home. Let's go on a field trip. This is
04:16 very exciting. We're going to find out what the soul paper is made
04:20 of. Here we go. It is Lipton tea. Lipton tea.
04:24 That's all you need. I'm going to show you in a second how to make it into the soul
04:28 paper. But first I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the effect.
04:32 What I love about this trick is that the story
04:36 and the magic come together at the exact same moment.
04:40 I love it when magicians do this. They set up the story line early on
04:44 then they get to the magic and they just beautifully intersect at the end.
04:48 Most recently I saw Ben Earl do
04:52 this on an episode of Penn & Teller's Fooled Us. He pulled out a little card
04:56 and on the card was a hand with a card
05:00 palmed like this. And he said that for him this sums up
05:04 everything he loves about sleight of hand magic and card. And he says I hope to leave you
05:08 with an image like this. And then he finds
05:12 four aces and then he says I'm going to do it again for you.
05:16 He says I'm going to do it one handed. I'll do it with this hand. And he goes and he finds
05:20 the aces. And by this point you've forgotten about what he says at the beginning.
05:24 So he finds three of the aces and then for the fourth ace he turns
05:28 around and he's got the fourth ace in his hand just like that.
05:32 And then you think back to that story he told at the beginning and the image
05:36 he set up. Oh it's a great moment. And if you've seen David
05:40 Copperfield's show you know he does a similar thing with
05:44 a story about his grandfather and how his grandfather always wanted
05:48 this particular car. And then he does a trick of the lottery
05:52 prediction. And then at the end he makes
05:56 the car appear and by this point you've kind of forgotten
06:00 about it. But then it's just a beautiful, the car appears and you think back
06:04 then to the grandfather and his wishes. And these are both great examples of
06:08 story and magic coming together. And that is what I tried to
06:12 do with soul paper here. This is the exciting part. This is how we make
06:16 the soul paper. Now as you can see I've got about
06:20 seven or eight pieces already prepared. But I'm going to show you how you
06:24 can make your own. I use Lipton's tea because
06:28 it is the cheapest. But I have done this with other tea brands
06:32 and it works just fine. Unless it's one of those
06:36 crazy tea brands that has the triangle tea bags. This will not work
06:40 with those. You want this traditional tea bag design.
06:44 And you get the tea to the bottom. And you can see I've got
06:48 two here. And then I'm going to cut it off
06:52 right there. Now all the tea
06:56 that gets dumped out. And that's going to leave me
07:00 with two tubes of paper.
07:04 And you get rid of all the excess tea bag. Now the reason
07:08 that you want to use two instead of one
07:12 that's because when you light it on fire you want there to be a nice
07:16 mass that goes up in the air and comes on down.
07:20 You can do it with one. But with one I just find the mass
07:24 is not quite big enough. And also
07:28 if you do it with three, which I've also tried, then it
07:32 weighs too much and it won't go up in the air. Now
07:36 you'll see what I'm doing. There's a seam on the side of the tea bag.
07:40 And I'm loading one into the other with the seams on the
07:44 opposite sides. That's because when it begins to burn
07:48 down, sometimes the seam, it takes up more space and it
07:52 will burn unevenly if both the seams are on the same side.
07:56 So you put them on opposite sides like that.
08:00 Now I'm going to crease it one way and then
08:04 I unfold it. I find the middle of the tea bags.
08:08 Just like there. And then I'm going to crease it in the
08:12 other direction too. And that's so
08:16 when it comes time and we open it up, it will open from the middle like
08:20 that and it will stand up just like that.
08:24 So what I like to do is I make a lot of pieces
08:28 of soul paper and then I keep them in a plastic baggie
08:32 like this. And you'll want to do that because if they get
08:36 wet, that does not work so well for the trick.
08:40 One last thing you can do, in case your edges
08:44 are uneven in the initial cut, I'm going to take a pair of scissors
08:48 and you can cut straight edges like that.
08:52 And that way, that will just ensure
08:56 that when it comes time to perform, it's going to stand up nice and straight
09:00 like that. If you want, you can just do this soul paper
09:04 on its own. You can talk about witch doctor ceremonies, you can light up
09:08 a piece of soul paper and then you can suck it up, trick's over.
09:12 It's still pretty cool. But I like to add
09:16 something more to it, another magic moment. And I think a great way
09:20 to do that is to have a person think of someone that they know
09:24 that's no longer with us and then you reveal the name
09:28 or the initials of that person right after you suck up the paper.
09:32 That's what you just saw in the video here. Now there's a couple ways
09:36 to get information from people. A great
09:40 way to do it is with a peek. Right now on Penguin Magic,
09:44 there's a product by Dr. Bill. It's Dr. Bill's Billet Tear
09:48 that I know is getting very good reviews. And that's where you can get a
09:52 secret piece of information from something that someone has written down.
09:56 Also on Theory 11, Spidey has a very clever peek
10:00 that's easy to do. You can do it with a business card. And these peeks basically mean
10:04 someone's write something down, you fold it up and then you seem to not
10:08 even look at it, but you know what they wrote down. So one of those
10:12 would work great with soul paper. But what I did in
10:16 the presentation, because I'm most familiar with it, is a center tear.
10:20 And this is an old idea that I'm going to teach you right now.
10:24 How it works is this. You get someone to write down
10:28 something in the middle of a piece of paper like that.
10:32 And then you ask them, fold it in half and fold it
10:36 in half again. So they're going to do that. They're going to fold it in half
10:40 and they're going to fold it in half again. Now what's interesting
10:44 is all of the information is in that one corner
10:48 right there. And there's a way to tear it up
10:52 such that you retain that corner of information. And I'm going to show you
10:56 right now. So the information is right there on the upper right
11:00 corner and all of the edges here, they're in the lower left corner.
11:04 Here's the information and it's in the center of the paper there.
11:08 So the first rip happens like this.
11:12 Now I've got all the information right there. And I reposition the pieces
11:16 like that and I tear again. So now
11:20 all the information is on my right thumb, just there.
11:24 Now what I do is I separate the information
11:28 from the extra pieces as I dump those into the glass
11:32 and then I dump in the left
11:36 hand pieces and I pick up the glass like this
11:40 and stir it around a little bit. And that's great
11:44 because I have to secretly retain this information and obviously this is not
11:48 a normal position to keep your hand in. So if I pick up the
11:52 glass though and swirl it around, all of a sudden it makes sense
11:56 for me to have this piece of information hidden in my hand.
12:00 Next, I say go ahead and swirl up the pieces yourself
12:04 and I'm going to turn around so I can't peek at any
12:08 of the writing. And then when you're done swirling, go ahead and place
12:12 the mirror on top of the glass. Now, you don't have to use a mirror
12:16 obviously. I like using a mirror because when that soul paper
12:20 burns down, you get even more of a flame when it's reflected.
12:24 But if you want, you can use a book or anything flat.
12:28 The basic idea is the essence of the person they're thinking about is in the
12:32 liquid here and then it just goes up through there and up through the soul paper
12:36 and rises up. So it's a nice image and of course it all excuses you.
12:40 You say, "I'm going to turn around so I can't peek at the writing."
12:44 And then when you turn around, can't get any easier than this. All you do
12:48 is unfold the piece of paper. Haha, I said can't get easier than
12:52 this. Then I can't unfold the paper. You unfold the paper and you
12:56 look at the initials of the person that they wrote down. Super quick
13:00 aside for those of you mentalists out there. I know many of you are already
13:04 familiar with the center tear so I want to give you something, a little bonus
13:08 for the money you spent on this. This is another idea that can
13:12 really take your center tear to the next level. If you're performing for a lot of
13:16 people, you can actually have a piece of paper with
13:20 four different things written down. And of course this is a
13:24 looser, flimsier piece of paper. You get people to write down four different
13:28 things and now, they're just going to love this. If you fold it in half
13:32 and then you fold it in half again and then you fold it in half again
13:36 and you fold it in half again, you can
13:40 actually do a center tear that will get out all
13:44 the pieces of information. And the mechanics are the exact same
13:48 but this time, the one corner as opposed to having that
13:52 one piece of information. Now, if you unfold it, you will actually
13:56 find all four pieces of information there.
14:00 So if you're already familiar with the center tear, I just wanted to give you a little extra something
14:04 for your money and you might have some luck with that. Not right
14:08 for soul paper. Speaking of, let's get back to that trick now. We are
14:12 getting closer and closer to the fun part. I know you can feel it. But first
14:16 we have to create an effigy of the person who
14:20 has passed away. So I ask, was it a male or a female?
14:24 And let's say they say it was a female. I might draw
14:28 a little design just like that. And it looks
14:32 pretty simple, simple stick figure. But that goes along
14:36 with the whole voodoo theme. Voodoo dolls are very simple.
14:40 So it all works out now. And now, finally, finally
14:44 we have reached the fun part. We're going to light the soul paper.
14:48 The key with lighting the soul paper is you
14:52 got to light it from one side and then the other. Because if
14:56 you only light one side, it's going to burn at that side and
15:00 topple over. You don't want that. You want it to burn on both sides
15:04 evenly. And when it does, it is going to shoot up on its own.
15:08 So before you actually make it happen here, a little acting
15:12 note. You want to act like you are the one making it
15:16 shoot up. And this is, I guess, stage magic 101 of gesturing
15:20 boxes. When of course they're going to work on its own, but you still want to have the power.
15:24 So what I like to do, I have a position here and then right before it
15:28 goes up, I turn my hands up like that. And if it still doesn't
15:32 go up, then I lift my hands up like that. So I give myself
15:36 two chances to actually hit the beat. Let's see if I can
15:40 hit it right now.
15:44 So I light from one side, the other. I shake the match.
15:48 I don't blow it. Because if I blow the match, then I might blow the soul paper
15:52 too. And you don't want that. So there go the hands and then they turn up
15:56 and then they come up like that. And the soul paper goes up.
16:00 And then we catch it.
16:04 Now, before I suck this up, let me
16:08 give you two very important safety warnings. One,
16:12 if you're going to perform this trick on one or two special occasions, that's great.
16:16 Suck it up. But if you perform all the time,
16:20 I do not recommend sucking this up. I would rub it into your hand
16:24 and absorb the essence that way. And then you change the story
16:28 that the witch doctor just absorbed it into their body. You don't use the word suck.
16:32 Also, whenever you're playing with fire, and a lot of
16:36 magic tricks involve fire, but you've got to be careful. It is always best
16:40 to have either a fire extinguisher or water close by.
16:44 Also, you can see my ceiling here. There's nothing here that's going to catch on
16:48 fire. We just got a normal basic ceiling. But if you're performing with any
16:52 sort of paper around, be very cautious of that.
16:56 Be cautious, guys. Alright. Sucking this up, you just do it.
17:00 Does it taste great? No, but it doesn't taste much of anything. And it looks
17:04 like this. It's pretty cool, right?
17:08 And after you suck it up, you reveal the initials. You say
17:12 DM, or whatever you want to say. Whenever you're
17:16 talking about spectators, dead relatives, you've got to be careful.
17:20 I'll leave you with this thought. For most people, magic
17:24 is a fun thing. And they'll get that this is just a magic trick. But sometimes
17:28 people get really creeped out by this stuff, and they take it seriously.
17:32 I remember one time back in my freshman year of college, I was doing magic for
17:36 someone, and she was just in tears. She was bawling.
17:40 And at the time, I was loving this feeling of power, but I
17:44 started to feel guilty about it afterwards. And I realized
17:48 how much power you can wield with a trick like this.
17:52 So me personally, if someone asks me, "Was that just a trick?" I'll say, "Yeah, it's just
17:56 a magic trick." I won't tell them how it's done. But whenever you
18:00 tap into emotional things like this, the death of a loved one,
18:04 I would urge you to be very cautious. Okay. That said,
18:08 it is okay to creep people out. That is fun. And I hope you have fun
18:12 with this trick. If you liked it, please, please check out the rest of
18:16 my stuff on Theory11. I have a bunch of releases. And if you like
18:20 this trick, you might like those tricks too. And you might like my teaching style
18:24 if you liked this. And thank you again
18:28 for purchasing the download. I really appreciate it.
18:32 [music]
18:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]