Lucid: Cull Alternative

I love your Lucid ACAAN. I definitely want to try it soon but I don’t have a good cull. The thing that people sometimes recommend is to spread the deck then break the spread at their card, gesture, and then reassemble the deck with their card at the back. I sometimes get away with that but I’ve had people bust me on it too. Any thoughts? —IS

Yes, what you’re talking about is this…

As an alternative to the cull, people will spread, cut at the card they need, gesture, and then put the cards that were in front, behind the other cards.

This can look like you’re doing what you’re doing: cutting the deck.

A few years ago, I had a non-culling friend who had the same issue—getting busted on this cull alternative a couple of times. I gave him the advice I’ll give you below. I just texted him to ask if it’s been working for him, and he said he hasn’t had any issue since he started doing it this way. So, anecdotally at least, it works.

I have found that people have a much harder time tracking things if you change multiple aspects at once.

What I mean is, in the gif above, we’re just changing the position of the two packets. This is something that’s not too difficult for people to pick up on, even if they’re not truly paying that much attention.

But if you also change the orientation or the polarity of objects, it is much more difficult for people to casually pick up on the fact that something definitely changed.

So instead of spreading the cards and then putting them back just by reversing the motion with which you spread originally, change something else before you put the packets back.

Here, for example, the card are spread, there’s a gesture, then the packets go from vertical to horizontal before they’re reassembled.

You’ll want to do it in a way where it looks natural and flows with what you’re saying, of course. The idea is just that with more going on, it’s harder for people to discern the packets have shifted.

In the Lucid ACAAN, you would also be asking a question at this time, so I think they’re even less likely to notice anything.

That being said, this might be a good routine to practice your cull regardless as, ideally, they should be under the impression you couldn’t know what their card is. So the notion that you might be moving it around is something that should be less likely to occur to them.