The inner life
Spoon Bending
Direct answer
Spoon Bending: Spoon bending is the apparent bending of cutlery or keys by the power of the mind alone. It became famous on television in the 1970s and is a standard effect of stage conjuring.
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At a glance
- Also called
- metal bending psychokinesis
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Psychokinesis, Parapsychology, Confirmation Bias, Cold Reading
Spoon bending is the apparent bending of cutlery or keys by the power of the mind alone. It became famous on television in the 1970s and is a standard effect of stage conjuring.
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Is spoon bending real?
In the usual form a performer holds a spoon or a key lightly, strokes it, and it appears to soften and droop. The effect was made famous from 1973 by the Israeli performer Uri Geller, who has always said that his abilities are real. After his broadcasts many viewers, children among them, reported that cutlery had bent at home, and for a few years metal bending was studied as a possible case of psychokinesis.
Conjurors have shown that the same sight can be produced by ordinary means. Their methods are simple: the bend is made by hand at a moment when attention is elsewhere, or the piece is prepared beforehand, and the slow droop is a way of revealing a bend already there. No bending is on record under conditions in which the hands were kept from the object and the watching was done by people who knew those methods.
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What sets Spoon Bending apart
Spoon bending is unusual among psychic claims in being a single, visible, physical effect that anyone can check afterwards: the spoon is bent or it is not. That concreteness is what made it persuasive on television and what makes it open to test. The question was never whether the metal bent but when, and by what. Conjurors show that a hand can do it unseen, and no bending is on record under controls that rule that out.
- Rose to fame: 1973 onward, through the television appearances of Uri Geller
- Claimed as: psychokinesis acting on metal
- Scientist involved: John Taylor, who endorsed it in 1975 and withdrew in 1980
- Laboratory hoax: two magicians posed as psychics at St Louis, 1979 to 1983
- Conjurors' method: a bend made by hand under misdirection, then revealed slowly
Often mistaken for something else: Laboratory psychokinesis looks for a faint statistical bias in dice or random numbers; spoon bending is a large effect seen with the eye.
The story behind Spoon Bending
In 1973 Geller appeared on an American talk show where the props had been chosen on the advice of the conjuror James Randi, and he did not produce the effect that evening. The physicist John Taylor of King's College London tested child metal benders and endorsed the effect in a book of 1975; after closer checks he withdrew that view in 1980. From 1979 two young magicians posed as psychics at a laboratory in St Louis and were studied there for many months, a hoax Randi revealed in 1983.
Why Spoon Bending matters
Spoon Bending is a textbook case of how hard a striking effect is to judge by eye, since conjurors can produce the same sight by misdirection.
How to read Spoon Bending
Conjurors perform it as entertainment; sceptics teach with it; some workshops still present it as mind over matter.
Spoon Bending in practice: an example
A magician bends a borrowed spoon on a table top, then shows the audience the instant at which the hand did the work unseen.
Where readings of Spoon Bending go wrong
Trained scientists have been fooled by conjurors posing as psychics, so watching closely is no safeguard without knowing how the effect is made.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- spoon bending trick, how does spoon bending work, psychic spoon bending, metal bending psychokinesis, is spoon bending real
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Is spoon bending real?
The spoons do bend. Conjurors do it by ordinary force applied when the audience is not looking, or before the performance, and no demonstration is on record as succeeding under controls designed by people who know those methods.
How do magicians bend spoons?
The commonest way is to bend the spoon by hand under cover of a larger movement and then reveal the bend slowly, so that it seems to happen as it is watched. Published explanations by magicians show several variations.
Did scientists ever confirm spoon bending?
A few researchers in the 1970s said they had observed it. Critics judged that their tests lacked controls against sleight of hand, and the best known of them, John Taylor, later withdrew his support after stricter experiments found nothing.
