Marucci's Bizarre Bazaar

The Voodoo Doll
by Peter Marucci

Voodoo isn’t so much a religion as it is a creation of Hollywood. The religion that is meant is either Voudon or Santeria. Voodoo provides scripts, zombies, and witch doctors for the movies. Nevertheless, when you mention the word “voodoo”, everyone immediately thinks they know what you mean. As you’ll see here:

The Voodoo Doll

Effect: The magus produces a small doll and claims it is a voodoo doll, capable of afflicting a person with pain. The magus also produces a pin and a set of cards, each one of which lists a body part: head, left leg, right leg, torso, etc.

A spectator freely selects a card and the doll, which had been hidden, is again produced with the pin in it; the pin is penetrating the body part freely selected.

Working: This obviously requires a force of sorts and, depending on the result wanted, that determines which force is used.

We will use a simple cyclical force here (and present a longer force in Second thoughts, below).

The cards are set up from the top to the bottom of the body: Head, left arm, right arm, torso, left leg, right leg. The arms and legs are listed in military order – left, right.

With the pack of cards set up like this, they can be cut as often as one wishes without disturbing the cyclical order of the cards. For example, no matter how often the cards are cut, the right leg will always follow the left leg, and the torso will follow the right arm, and so on.

Presentation: The practice of voodoo entails a basic tenet of dark magic: Like affects like.

This doll is supposed to look like a person who shall go unnamed for the time being. In voodoo, the doll would include nail or hair clippings or some other physical part of the person to be cursed with pain.

This pin (the magus shows the pin) would be stuck in a part of the doll’s body and the person represented by the doll would be afflicted by a stabbing pain in that part of the body. Or so the story goes.

(The magus then puts the pin and the doll into his pocket or under a handkerchief, so that it is out of sight.)

Since we don’t want to injure anyone tonight, there are no nail or hair clippings or anything else in the doll to connect it to a real person.

Remember, this is just a demonstration of how voodoo works; not an actual – and painful or possibly fatal – working of it.

Please cut the cards like this. (The magus demonstrates as single cut, and completes it by putting the bottom packet on top.)

(The spectator cuts the cards until she is satisfied and then is asked to take the top card that she has cut to; let us assume it says “torso”.)

(The magus then picks up the remainder of the cards and secretly glances at the bottom card, which – in this case – would say “right arm.” He would then know that the spectator has selected the torso, due to the cyclical nature of the cards.)

(The magus reaches into his pocket, or wherever he has hidden the doll and the pin, and pushes the pin into the torso, to match the spectator’s card. This is not a “magic move”; he simply stabs the doll with the pin; the reason for it being out of sight, is that you don’t want the trick to come to a climax too soon.)

(The magus puts the doll on the table, covering it with his hands and asks the spectator which part of the body is on her card. When she says “torso”, the magus reveals the doll with the pin in its torso.)

And that, roughly, is how voodoo works!

Second thoughts: I promised you a longer handling and here it is:

By putting a tiny pencil dot on one of the cards (for example, “head”), you are able to force that card using the PATEO force (Point At Two, Eliminate One).

If you have an odd number of cards, you begin; an even number, and the spectator begins.

Say that your left index finger will be the past and your right index finger will be the future. You will touch two cards, and the other person will eliminate one by turning it up. (You can demonstrate, if you have an odd number of cards.)

Guide the spectator through the first couple of eliminations, because she may become confused and you don’t want that to happen.

When the two of you have, in turn, eliminated all but one (the “head”), you may produce the doll dramatically, with the pin sticking into its head.

Enjoy; your audience will. And don’t worry about “over-acting”; it is to be expected when discussing “dark magic” like voodoo!

Peter Marucci