Chaotic Oil & Water by Dani DaOrtiz (Chaos Project Chapter 7)

The What
The magician hands out many packets of the deck to his audience to shuffle. Everybody shuffles. The packets are reassembled into a full deck. The deck is shown to be completely and thoroughly shuffled. Everyone is asked to take a mental snapshot of the well-mixed deck. Spectators then take random groups from the deck, shuffle them, and then put down a pair of cards into a pile on the table. The remainder of the cards are discarded. This goes on until the deck is exhausted. The cards the spectators selected and then turned over to show they have separated themselves into the reds and blacks. As a kicker ending, the discards are shown to have separated themselves into reds and blacks as well. Everything is examinable.

The How
The first thing that happens after this amazing effect is that Dani immediately teaches you this astonishing trick. Chaotic Oil & Water is astonishingly easy to do. If you can deal cards to the table, you can do this trick. Despite looking like the deck has been well shuffled by your audience, all of the cards are completely under your control. The amazingly casual handling is a hallmark of Dani’s work, and this is a crash course in looking like the chaos king.

The Why
Here is where Dani breaks down the true secrets of Chaos. Dani will walk introduce you to lateral thinking so that you can break up expected patterns in your audience’s mind. Lateral thinking is the weapon a magician uses to lead your audience into any number of traps that you can use to astonish them. Building on this, Dani teaches his on-screen students and you how to activate the subconscious of your spectator. Learning to lead your audience to draw their own conclusions can be a powerful tool the chaos magician can use to create incredible card magic.

The Chaos Project is a year-long course in learning some of the most devious methods and principles that make the magic of Dani DaOrtiz so deceptive. The seventh lesson teaches you the mental judo that Dani has used to bamboozle the best magicians in the world. Embrace the chaos with Dani DaOrtiz in Chapter 7 of The Chaos Project.