Modern Oracle by Chris Rawlins

I don’t know how Chris keeps coming up with brilliant idea after brilliant idea and continues to execute them so well. Clearly, I'm not the only one who feels this way because he continuously sells out of his material at Blackpool. This deck was a big hit at Blackpool 2025, and I can see why. It's a deck of 30 cards that poses as a magic eight ball for “easier travel.” Any yes or no question can be asked, and the eight-ball deck will always answer correctly.

In reality, the cards are marked very subtly, but once you know what to look for, it’s dead easy to see even from a distance. The markings let you know if the card contains a “yes” or “no” answer so that you know how to phrase the question asked to ensure the oracle is always right.

Pair this simple secret with the box that operates as a simple peek device, and you have a full routine at your fingertips with nothing more than this magic eight-ball deck, a piece of paper, and something to write with.

The included tutorial is almost 77 minutes long and covers absolutely everything including many routine ideas and handlings.

In Chris’s routine, his finale is he has three cards removed and uses the eight ball’s answers to those three questions to deduce the written word/object/etc. I will be performing this as if the cards hold all of the power. I’ll have the spectator shuffle the cards and then treat it basically as “20 Questions” and have the deck answer correctly each time until ultimately, the deck confirms that I have made it to the thought of object.

With my presentation, I wanted to make the writing of the word seem like it was part of the game. So I took some dry-erase contact paper, stuck it on the face of one of the cards, and cut it down to size. Now, I can introduce the deck, remove the dry-erase card and a marker, and have the spectator write their thought-of-object. To me, this makes it feel a little more self-contained and makes it feel like writing it down is a process of the game and not a process of the method. Of course, there are some presentations where it would be more beneficial to have the writing down feel like the performer’s idea, but for my purposes, this has been working nicely.