Lewis-le-val-aok2_17616.pdf

AOK2 GRAPHOLOGY I would like to talk a little bit about some of the Graphology readings I do during performances of AOK2. For many years the idea of Graphology bored me, and I thought it would bore spectators too. However, in the AOK2 performance videos, look at how excited people get when I mention that I will analyse their handwriting to see what it says about their personality. People LOVE this, as it is one of the few oracles or reading systems where you are using information that is personal to the people you are reading for (their handwriting). Palm reading is similar, as it uses their lines on their own hand. As much as I love tarot, it is impersonal as the people have no connection to the cards. Graphology, as opposed to forensic handwriting analysis, or FISH (Forensic Information System for Handwriting) is not a science, it is a pseudo-science, just like palm reading. There is no scientific evidence to back up the idea that a person’s character or personality traits can be determined by their handwriting. Forensic handwriting analysis on the other hand is a science, which is mostly used to detect signature forgery and other written documents used as evidence in a court of law.

However, this does not stop Graphology and palm reading from being extremely useful during our performances. Essentially, you will be using your spectator’s (or another spectator’s) handwriting to cue you with some things to say whilst apparently analysing their handwriting. Everything in existence was either discovered or invented. Nobody discovered Graphology, meaning it was invented. Someone, somewhere decided that by looking at a person’s handwriting, it could tell you about their personality. Personally I believe there are some elements of truth to this, for example when I am angry, I press harder with the pen and write larger, but this determines my current mood, not my personality. Handwriting is changeable. When I write normally, my writing looks like it was written during an earthquake. When I write a greetings or holiday card, my writing takes on a prettier form. When I am filling out an official form, my writing is clear and concise, free of any artistic flourish. I also have a classical, caligraphic style that I use when making props for work. I’ve worked on a pirate ship, also as a Victorian era storyteller, in a Vaudeville theatre and in an 1800’s themed venue. All requiring the use of an ‘old letter’ style of writing. All my styles looking like they’ve been written by different people. So either I have a multiple personality disorder, or Graphology holds no weight. Still, the use of Graphology during a performance is strong and does indeed carry a lot of

weight. You will find a lot of information online about what the various lines and shapes in writing are supposed to mean. So you could spend some time learning these meanings from an anonymous source, or you could just use this incredibly simple system I created for my own use, which is just as relatable as any other in depth Graphology system out there. METHOD All you do is simply imagine that each letter is a human figure; the shape of a human body. Imagine all the letters in their writing make up a group of people standing together, and you will be talking about the most interesting characters that stand out to you.

Let’s start with direction. Are the characters standing still, moving forwards or moving backwards? STANDING STILL

In this example, the letters do not appear to be leaning back (to the left) or leaning forwards (to the right). I interpret left as back and right as forwards as we write from left to right. Letters leaning to the right would indicate a forward motion. I interpret these letters as standing still. As though the characters are looking towards the writer. With writing such as this, I would say that the writer is very much in the present. Not thinking too far ahead into the future, they deal with each situation they face as they occur, along their path. Currently happy with what is going on in their life right now and are in no rush to change the way things are. They have an idea of what they want for the future but are in no rush to get there. All I am doing is simply relating the letters to a human figure, and then relating that figure to my spectator as though it is them. Speaking metaphorically, with writing such as this I describe my spectator as someone currently standing still, living in the present. I might also say that they are the kind of

person who thinks things through thoroughly before making decisions. MOVING BACKWARDS

More common in left handed writers, I interpret writing leaning to the left as someone who often thinks about the past and how things once were, and strives to bring that back into their life once again. Maybe they used to feel or behave a certain way and they no longer recognise that part of themselves. Writing leaning back is rare, and in my opinion a little unnatural. You will not be faced with this often. Although this reading sounds like a fairly negative thing, in performance I would say that this person is noticing or has noticed a change in themselves, which may seem new or unusual to them, but this is only their natural progression through life. The past, good or bad, shapes us into the people we are today, and although there may be things in their past that they would like to recognise in the present, I would remind them that in the storybook of life, we do not repeat chapters, only learn and evolve from them.

MOVING FORWARDS

Moving forwards, writing leaning to the right. I would say that this is a forward thinking person, somebody who doesn’t spend too much time thinking before putting their thoughts into action. It would bug them if they aren’t seeing progress in their endeavours, and are the type of person to adapt quickly to the situations they find themselves in. RUNNING FORWARDS

A slightly more extreme slant in the writing would indicate to me that this is a no nonsense person who likes to get things done quickly so they can move on to the next thing. It will bug them if people around them aren’t on the same wavelength or in agreement with them. They like things to move quickly and their ability to do so is a skill that they have acquired naturally through the past few years. They are open to change and in fact embrace it. If things stay the same for too long for them, they begin to feel stuck in their situation and are more likely to take an impulsive vacation, learn a new skill or take on extra ideas about what they want in life, simply to invite change or progression. For this person, the most exciting things in life are

the new things, the adventures and of course the challenges. Next, let’s take a look at the figures/characters themselves. THE HEAD

If the letters are human figures, look at where the head would be. Are you seeing large loops like the example above? Particularly in letters that would have loops at the top, such as in the A and the R, and especially here in the O in the word ‘knowing’. It is closer to the top of the word than in its usual place. I would interpret this as a logical thinking, rational person who doesn’t let their emotions rule their decisions. They are calculated and make efforts to understand the world around them and the issues they face in life. They are mind oriented. THE HEART

Larger looping in general, in letters such as e, a, o and g. I interpret this as somebody who is comfortable in sharing their emotions with people around them. They feel comfortable talking about their feelings and wear their heart on their sleeve. If the loops are small and almost filled in by the pen, I

interpret it as someone who tends not to share their emotions and keep themselves to themselves. Of course they share with those closest to them but usually, they are the last to let people be aware of their innermost feelings. Remember: Large loops = visible heart. Small loops = invisible heart. I know that sounds pretty harsh but you will never say that out loud, it’s only a useful memory trick to help you remember. Larger loops indicate to me that this person is heart oriented, following their emotions over their rational thought. CREATIVE FLOURISH

Unusual choice of lettering, dotting ‘i’ with circles or hearts, or extra information such as smiley faces, even lengthy or curly tails on letters such as g and y, indicate to me that this is a creative person who chooses to see the good in things. They perceive their reality in ways that they choose and are more likely to be affected emotionally when things outside of their control are inconsistent with, or contradict their preferred outlook on life.

EXTRA TIPS Of course there is a lot more to Graphology than this simple system, but remember, I put this system together for use in mentalism performances. I didn’t want to have to memorise all kinds of meanings for different things. This system isn’t for a lengthy reading, but an added bonus to the end of a routine. You only need to say a few lines inspired by the writing you are looking at, and this system will allow you to do that. Your choice of pen (Sharpie or similar) and the fact that you have asked them to write clearly will push most people outside of their normal handwriting style anyway. Their writing during this routine will not be the same as their standard handwriting, so even if you were an experienced Graphologist, the writing provided by spectators in this routine wouldn’t be a good enough sample for an in depth reading anyway. Even an experienced Graphologist would have to resort to the basics, as spectators are extremely limited in how they will be able to write, due to both the physical writing instruments and your given instructions. This system is all about providing you with something to say in the moment. You don’t have to be looking at the writing that belongs to the spectator you are reading for. You will notice that sometimes in performance I am reading the information I am peeking (which belongs to another spectator) whilst talking about the writing as though it belongs to another. Other times I have fully read the information I am peeking before second dealing and beginning to talk about the

spectator’s actual writing. It doesn’t matter who’s writing you are apparently analysing, all that matters is you have something to say in the moment. Remember, there is no reason why a person’s handwriting would tell you about their personality, so it wouldn’t matter if you are looking at writing that doesn’t belong to the spectator you are talking to. You will see why when we get to the Readings section. The best way (I have found) to do this, which you will see in the performance where I am sat at a big table with four people, is I stay silent whilst getting my peek at the next card, as though I am studying their writing before talking about it, when in truth I am simply reading my next peek. When I have read it all, I do a second deal and immediately jump in to some graphology. This leaves me with the spectator’s genuine card and writing, which I bring all the attention to before moving on to the next reveal. INTERPRETING DRAWINGS Metaphor, metaphor, metaphor. The absolute best way to very quickly get good at interpreting drawings is to visit an art gallery. Make an effort to look at every piece of art in the gallery and mentally imagine that you are an art expert, interpreting the art for another person. You don’t have to know anything about the art! By simply pretending to be an expert working at the gallery, you will subconsciously slip into

the archetypal role of an expert. Take it seriously, don’t make fun of the art (no matter how ridiculous it looks). Find meaning where there is apparently none, make the art seem or sound better than it actually is. For best results, visit a modern art gallery where the art has no obvious or immediately recognisable level of skill or talent. Do this with every piece of art and you will notice yourself getting better and better at finding meaning in the abstract, finding order amongst the chaos. By the time you leave, you will never again struggle to artistically interpret even the simplest of drawings made by your spectators. You could do this from the comfort of your own home by looking at art on websites and apps such as Pinterest, but if you make the effort to leave the house and go to a gallery, you are more likely to focus entirely on your mission and not get distracted. This is also the same reason why when people have a gym at home, it gets used a lot less often than if they had to leave the house to go to a gym. They are there for one reason only, and removing themselves from any distractions at home. I was once complimented on my ability to interpret art by a curator at the Liverpool Tate gallery when they overheard me talking to some tourists about a basketball in a fish tank that they were looking at and trying to understand. In truth, I knew nothing about this ridiculous piece of garbage, but I was pretending to be a fine art expert. By simply pretending you already have the knowledge, you will realise you’ve actually had the knowledge all along.

READINGS In the section of the AOK2 download where I am talking about readings and answering questions through giving readings, I notice I went off on a number of tangents and rants, so here I would just like to clarify a few things and mention a few extra tips and pieces of advice. Mentalists are always looking for a system or a structure to giving readings. Always looking for techniques that will show us how and what to say to make it seem like we are reading a person. The truth is, there’s nothing to stop us from reading them for real. Why fake something that can be done for real which is often even easier? The only thing readings systems do is inspire content. This does not mean that what you say will be relevant to your spectator. Your statements are only as good as your spectator’s ability to connect them to their life. You provide the words, they provide the meaning. So why limit yourself to a system when in the end, it never truly matters. You could say anything (as long as it is polite, uplifting and not life changing). Be truthful in what you feel and genuinely sense when talking to someone. Take one look at them and ask yourself: What do I feel is happening in this person’s life and how does it make them feel? Whatever answer you give yourself, that is the content for your reading. Using a system over your genuine feelings will not guarantee you any more ‘hits’. You could have the best system in the

world but if your spectator cannot connect your statements to their life, then you will receive no hits. By freeing yourself from using any system, you will allow yourself the opportunity to say things that you wouldn’t have said if you were using a system and honestly, truthfully, this is when you get your best hits. Wild guesses out of nowhere and speaking from my own natural knowing have gotten me some of the greatest hits I could ever imagine, and there is no reason why you cannot do it too. Unfortunately we didn’t capture much of this on video when filming AOK2. If only we were filming the next night, we would have documented some incredible things. Typical! But you do not need to see me doing this when you can do it for yourself. Yes our mentalism routines have methods, but this does not mean that our readings require methods too. We do not need to trick someone or speak in vague terms that sound specific, just speak the truth from within and that is all you will ever need. Don’t forget, with AOK2 you have definite hits where it matters. You’ve peeked the information and you are absolutely going to hit with that. So before your definite reveal, give yourself a chance to say something, anything that you honestly feel and you will surprise even yourself with some of the things you come out with.

You don’t have to believe in psychic ability, you just have to be open to the possibility that there is more to life than we think we know. The ability to genuinely read someone is something we all have access to, we just have to grant ourselves access in the first place, and you can do that right now. When you look at some of the bigger mysteries in life, such as around 95% of the universe being totally invisible, 95% being dark energy and dark matter that we have not yet made the technological or scientific advancements in to analyse or understand, that’s huge! So when you look at something like that in comparison to genuinely trying to sense a few things about a person, it doesn’t seem that big of a deal, does it? In comparison to larger, massive mysteries, the smaller ones don’t actually feel that out of reach. We see everything in life from the perspective of an individual, looking outwards. So anything outside of our immediate understanding is often labelled as impossible or not true. But when you look at things from the other end of the scale, if you start with the biggest mysteries on the planet and list them all according to size, by the time you get to ‘intuitively reading another person’, you would be that close to your neutral state of being that it would seem so close within reach, you’ll wonder why you ever doubted your ability to do it in the first place! We often forget that what we label as reality is only a projection of our very limited physical senses. Our eyes can only see less than 1% of the Electromagnetic spectrum. We call

it visible light, it’s the only thing we can see. We can only hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum, and it’s like that for our other physical senses too. So if what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell is reality, then we are only experiencing less than 1% of reality! That’s almost nothing and yet we think we know it all. The mind however, is different. It shouldn’t exist and yet it does. Unlike the physical senses, we cannot count, weigh or measure the mind. Even in modern neuroscience, talk of the mind is almost taboo. We can study the brain and brain function and activity, but when it comes to the mind, we literally have almost nothing. The greatest scientists in the world still cannot explain the mind and its possibilities or limitations, so who are we to assume that we can? We don’t know if our mind can be used to look inside someone else's, but what we do know is that our mind at least has the ability to provide us with useful information to say during a reading. One likely solution is the following: The subconscious mind receives approximately 11 million bits of information per second, and only around 40 or 50 bits of information are sent to the conscious mind to be consciously processed. That’s a huge amount of information to lose every second. The moment you present yourself, or at least pretend to be someone who can provide readings, suddenly you will have greater access to information, simply because the subconscious recognises the situation you’ve put yourself in. It

knows that you are searching for extra data regarding the person in front of you. Ask and you shall receive. This data or information may not be ‘psychic’ in nature, but still valuable bits that we have received, due to the presence of those in front of us. We receive all kinds of extra information about the people we interact with every day, but most of the time that information goes unnoticed. Put yourself in a receptive state, actively waiting for your thoughts to provide you with information about the person in front of you, speak your findings and watch what happens! You may still think that the subconscious still cannot receive facts about another person’s life, but remember you are not providing facts, only words. Your spectator is the one who finds meaning in those words. If an aggressive person walks towards you making eye contact with you, suddenly your mind is flooded with information about what might happen next and you prepare yourself for it. Your subconscious recognises the situation you are in and provides you with necessary information. The same thing happens during performances, don’t ignore it. Your mind is on your side. Then we’ve got brainwave function. Our normal, natural state is what’s known as Beta, a neurologist will tell you the same. Beta brainwaves dominate our normal waking state of consciousness when attention is directed towards cognitive tasks and the outside world. Beta is a ‘fast’ activity, present when we are alert, attentive, engaged in problem solving,

judgment, decision making, or focused mental activity. During a performance we reach a higher level of Beta, meaning we have greater access to parts of the brain than usual. This alone is enough to grant us access to things that we wouldn’t usually think or say. In an ideal world, we would reach a Gamma state during our performances (good luck with that though!) Gamma brainwaves are the fastest of brain waves (high frequency, like a flute), and relate to simultaneous processing of information from different brain areas. Gamma brainwaves pass information rapidly and quietly. The most subtle of the brainwave frequencies, the mind has to be quiet to access gamma. Gamma was dismissed as 'spare brain noise' until researchers discovered it was highly active when in states of universal love, altruism, and the ‘higher virtues’. Gamma is also above the frequency of neuronal firing, so how it is generated remains a mystery. It is speculated that gamma rhythms modulate perception and consciousness, and that a greater presence of Gamma relates to expanded consciousness and spiritual emergence. To reach such a state of being during a performance would be extremely difficult, but we can experience something similar when we are in a ‘flow state’. You’ve all experienced this at least once in your life, when you can speak with perfect clarity, almost faster than you can think. Firing out information that you didn’t even know you were holding on to. The only reason I wanted to mention this here is to show you

that our varying states of being literally allow us access to things outside of the norm. Your brain activity right now as you read these words can and will be different when you’re in the middle of a performance. Trust in your varying levels of consciousness and it will serve you well, I promise. Probably the easiest technique that you can use during readings is to guess with a story. Guessing with a story allows you to disguise your guesses as impressions you are receiving. If you are going to throw out a guess, put it in a story. Then, if your spectator cannot relate to it, simply say, “That’s fine. A number of images appear in my mind and I don’t know where they come from. If I don’t tell you everything I see, think and feel, I may miss some important details.” Guessing with a story is as simple as this. Look at your spectator and allow your mind to show you a dream-like scene which includes your spectator. Don’t consciously construct a scene, allow one to naturally unfold and tell your spectator exactly what you see. As it is dream-like, this allows for things to be slightly unnatural. For example, in a recent performance of AOK2 I said to the lady, “I see you as a child holding hands with your father. You are at the zoo and he is pointing at the elephants.” I said this because that is what I saw. Next, I simply allowed my spectator to find whatever metaphorical meaning she

chose. If they cannot find one, provide one for them. If not taken literally, another way to look at the above scene would be as though it was her father teaching her about some of the bigger and more important things in life. Simple! Construct a dream within reality. Give them a dream whilst they are awake. Anything you describe as a story, no matter how brief, will be imagined by your spectator. I bet you, reader, even imagined a little girl holding hands with her father looking at elephants when you read the above line. It’s automatic! Present your stories not as psychic statements (which are supposed to reveal truth) but as impressions you are receiving. “This is what I am seeing and I don’t know why, maybe you can help me make sense of it…” and go from there. So many times I have done this and so many times my spectators have found meaning in what I have said. Sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. If they do not find meaning during the performance, they often have afterwards and told me all about it. If and when this happens to you, don’t forget to be genuinely interested. This is all about your spectators, and if you honestly care about your impressions, you will listen intently to the feedback. If all else fails, you’ve got your definite reveal from your peek. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain!

I hope this PDF provides some extra insights and clarity on the entire entity that is AOK2, and maybe even for your other routines too! Thanks for reading and until next time, I wish you all the best with your new favourite mind reading technique! Much love, Lewis Le Val. 2019.

AOK2