London is great, y'all, but what about the rest of England and Europe? Well, a primary reason I've been sticking around London is I booked myself for an all day workshop on psychometry and mediumship with noted psychic entertainer, Paul Voodini.

Psychometry is the reading of psychic impressions left in objects, generally personal objects that have or have had emotional significance to the owner. Mediumship is the art of connecting with and communicating with spirits. The two arts use many of the same skills, and in fact whenever I have performed seances, I have warmed up with psychometry before moving forward to active spirits. I have also used "haunted objects, combining both arts, which is my favorite approach.

Voodini is well known in the mentalist community for bringing the techniques of true believers in psychic phenomena and spiritualism to bear on mentalism performance. As I am, paradoxically, a bit of a hard-nosed rationalist performing as a psychic, a lot of what Voodini has to offer is of direct use to me.

And sure enough, I did gain some substantial insights into how to proceed with my own psychic show. I found the workshop well worth the time and money. It is, of course, way outside the scope of this blog to go into any detail on that. Let me simply say that magicians and mentalists, as I have said many many times before, could gain so much as artists by putting down the magic books for a while and simply taking acting classes.