Read an Excerpt
Chapter One The Mystery Behind Casanova If teachers and parents taught subjects in their order of importance to the males receiving their "wisdom," history lessons wouldn't invoke Greek philosophers and ancient mystics, presidents and kings, warriors and generals. They would focus instead on Casanova, history's most accomplished and successful lover. He was born in Venice, Italy, in 1725, and he died in 1798, numbers that are less important than these: By his own account, over those seventy-three years, Casanova enjoyed erotic liaisons with 122 women during his travels across Europe as a clergyman, soldier, violinist, and magician. In eighteenth-century France, nobody had more game. But Casanova didn't seduce indiscriminately. He set his sights high and took to bed only those women whose value made them worthy of pickup. These were the perfect 10s and near 10s of their day: what a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model might have looked like at one of Mozart's recitals, floating from one social set to the next, glancing discreetly over a ruffled fan that obscured a plunging bustline, her hairdo intricately sculpted three feet high. They were women of extreme beauty with the highest social ranking, seemingly off-limits to anyone but royalty. Forget Shakespeare's sonnets, the Gettysburg Address, and War and Peace--if Casanova had left behind not just an autobiography (itself wildly popular to this day) but a step-by-step, detailed how-to guide to his sexual conquests, it would rank as the most sought-after text in history, next to Holy Scriptures. What wouldn't you or any man give to learn the secret of seducing beautiful women? Just look at the timeless appeal of the Kama Sutra--and then imagine a guide not to exotic sexual positions but to getting beautiful women attracted to you in the first place. My name is Mystery, and I have written just such a guide, now in your hands. As the world's premier pickup artist, I am the closest thing there is to a modern-day Casanova (although I have already "outnumbered" him). Like my predecessor, I absolutely adore women. In fact, I fall in love with all of them. But that doesn't make me unique. What makes me unique is that because of the pickup techniques I have mastered, my love doesn't go unrequited. And I'm here to show you how to achieve the same success. The Algorithm for Getting Women Not only were the Venusian arts (the arts of love) excluded from your curriculum--but they're probably the only discipline teachers didn't try to cram into your brain as you passed from childhood through adolescence and then into adulthood. Let's face it, when you studied algebra at school, the only numbers you really cared about were the measurements of the girl in the tight sweater and the digits you needed to get her on the phone. Those numbers added up to something worth getting your hands on. Enter the Mystery Method. If someone doesn't have health and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt an algorithm on how to do that--perhaps a new diet and workout regimen. If someone doesn't have wealth and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt an algorithm for wealth building--perhaps a new investment portfolio. Similarly, in relationships, if someone doesn't have success and wants to get it, he or she will need to adopt the algorithm for success there. I invented that algorithm. I am your teacher and this is your guidebook to discerning the patterns in dynamic social interactions and then using them to your advantage. This body of knowledge, called the science of social dynamics, has become my life's work, particularly as it applies to the world of pickup. It is about more than seduction and sexual conquest; it also encompasses making friends with men and women alike. But, make no mistake, it is first and foremost about getting laid more than you could ever have dreamed possible, assuming that's what you want. And not just laid but, like Casanova, laid by those gorgeous women who have always seemed beyond reach. For him, it was members of the aristocracy; for you, I'm talking about the women you see walking runways in stiletto heels, on the arms of pro athletes and celebrities, and in the pages of Playboy and Maxim. You can have them. The Mystery Method can give them to you. Mastering the Science of Courtship The Mystery Method provides a step-by-step game plan that structures "courtship"--which is the quaint, old-fashioned term for the sequence of events that results in guys getting laid--for success. Before me, no one had ever defined courtship as a predetermined structure having several phases. Through years of study and experimentation, I identified a process that begins when you meet a woman who interests you. From there, using a finely calibrated ability to influence (not manipulate; there's a huge difference), which this book will help you develop, you build attraction with her. This concept is hugely important: Attraction comes before seduction. But attraction, while necessary, isn't an end in itself. Next, you need to build comfort with this woman you've targeted. (As you'll find out, both are equally necessary for reaching the end-game: sex.) As I teach "courtship," the process of building attraction and comfort will probably transpire over several venues--say, a bar and a restaurant--en route to the final venue, which will likely be your bed, or a hotel room's. That won't happen, however, until you create arousal at the end of the comfort-building stage and then begin a sexual relationship by seducing her. That's what the Mystery Method does. What it is, is an advanced algorithm thirteen years in the making. I created it through years of trial and error, because I had to. When I was starting out there was no guidebook like the one you have now. I didn't have the luxury of buying a book like this, or attending a seminar, or Googling "pickup artist" online. Armed with nothing but ignorance and desire, I went out into "the field," because that's where the girls were. Step-by-step, I learned first how to "open." Once I learned how to open, I also discovered empirically that in public settings girls of beauty are seldom, if ever, alone. So then I had to get good at opening an entire group, and so on, until my system for seducing women became comprehensive, battle-tested, and turnkey. Honestly, had I read a guidebook like this when I was starting out, I would have saved myself about seven years of pain and confusion. Since its conception, the Mystery Method has been modified by some of my closest friends, most of whom were former students of mine who got caught up to speed on my techniques and became great pickup artists in their own right. Just as my students have learned their craft from me, I have in turn learned much from them, and the insights they gained in the field have improved my own methodology. Like any system of self-improvement and personal transformation, the Mystery Method is constantly being improved. It will always be a work in progress because the people using it are constantly changing as well. To keep it up-to-date with the latest empirical data available, I make systematic improvements every six months, without fail. You can keep up with our refinements and new discoveries at mysterymethod.com. Unlock the Secret to Attracting Beautiful Women If you follow the Mystery Method, as outlined in this book, you literally should be able to seduce any woman you meet--no matter how attractive she is and no matter how far out of reach she seems--within four to ten hours, with the average seduction occurring within seven, leading to what I call the Seven-Hour Rule. (Bear in mind that those seven hours aren't necessarily continuous, although they can be. As I noted, usually taking courtship to seduction requires venue changes, which have to be accommodated through what are called time bridges. More on those later.) Seducing any woman in seven hours . . . how is this possible? The reason the Mystery Method works, and works so quickly, is that it defines the natural process of courtship, from meeting to sex, that has applied to every love story you've ever heard about, or read, or experienced. It reflects universal truths and the natural course of events, and I've backward-engineered it from my own successes. I would go in, "build" a girlfriend, and then think, OK, how did I do that? That's how I figured out and unraveled the myriad of cognitive models that define courtship. OK, you're probably thinking, Of course I'd love to build attraction and comfort with a gorgeous woman, but every time I approach one I get shot down before I've finished my second or third sentence. Here's the deal--and it's one of the most amazing secrets of the Mystery Method because it is so counterintuitive, running contrary to everything you've believed about attracting beautiful women your entire life. In order for you to be permitted the audience of a beautiful woman to attempt to attract her, you must first disqualify yourself from being considered a potential suitor by her. If you don't do that, she will assume by your approach alone that you're after her. And if you're after her, she knows that you perceive her as having high value. And if her value is high, the odds are that it's higher than yours. In other words, you will have low value, and you will be penalized, not only just for approaching her but also for being nice. At that point, you've already telegraphed that you're not worth it. I will teach you how to avoid this trap using the Mystery Method. Instead of stumbling into a group of women blindly and immediately qualifying yourself as a potential suitor, you will learn how to win them over during those first few minutes, allowing you to demonstrate a higher value to them. The book will of course give you chapter and verse on demonstrating a higher value, from "peacocking" (dressing outlandishly) and preselecting (displaying other women to the "target," which often builds a jealousy plotline into your seduction), to social proof (showing that others in her set value you highly), to "negging" (making subtle-yet-negative statements that put your target off-guard and make her question her own value, increasing yours on a relative basis). There is even a special section on demonstrating higher value to, and then picking up, "hired guns," a term describing anyone who is hired for her beauty, including exotic dancers, bartenders, go-go dancers, hostesses, and models. In fact, throughout the entire book I fill in the meeting-to-sex structure of courtship with Venusian arts gambits, so that you can complete the objectives of each phase. But I go further still by adding a third layer to the book. I show you how to personalize your game, helping you create and then convey an identity whose stereotype works for you to presume higher value. The last thing I want to do is turn you into a generic cookie-cutter pickup artist. Using the Mystery Method, I picked up a supermodel as she sat with seven coworkers at a popular Hollywood sushi bar. While they paid the bill, I had only two or three minutes to interact. I immediately initiated a chat with her, disqualified myself from being considered a potential suitor, and systematically demonstrated my value to her, while not telegraphing interest. When my target's group left, she decided to hang by the bar with two friends. To develop social proof, I opened an adjacent four-set--two girls, two guys--and disarmed the guys, who soon departed. With two women on my arms, I re-engaged my target, now in a three-set. Introducing my wing into the set to befriend and occupy my target's friends for a moment, I moved her into isolation, escalated kino, and voila! I got my first supermodel. Once you've mastered the techniques I outline here, you too can perform equally spectacular seductions! Building a Mystery I can do it for you because I've done it for myself. Believe it or not, when I was younger, I was actually an extremely shy person. No wonder I became fascinated by magic. I loved hiding behind it; it afforded me a social mask, protecting me in my interactions with people. Magic provided me with prescripted routines packing an emotional punch. The turning point for me came in my late teens, when I traveled to Florida to perform a magic show on a cruise ship. Before I could even get scheduled on the ship, I found myself making more money performing intimate and interactive illusion in restaurants and lounges. In fact, I did so well in the restaurants that I never bothered to make it on board. More important, the experience taught me a series of essential concepts. For example, in that setting, you shouldn't just walk up to a table of strangers and say, "Uh, hi. Would you like to see some magic?" The easiest thing for someone to say in that situation is no. So I had to come up with a series of techniques for being cool--that way, they would actually want me to be there. Then I had to internalize these rules that I developed, so that over repeated days of work I'd get better and better at it. Eventually, I found myself in possession of a really cool social skill set. Then I came to realize that I could remove the magic from those routines and they would still pack a punch. I got good at developing stories and plotlines with which I could captivate a group, and that became the basis of forming routines and using canned material. I then started teaching these skills to my friends. They mastered them, and so can you. If you're thinking, Yeah, that worked for you, but it will never work for me; I'm a geek, don't worry. I was a geek, too. The truth is, generally speaking, geeks are intelligent individuals who simply haven't yet applied that intelligence to social scenarios; hence, they appear deficient in that area. Making matters worse, the society around us, at first glance, appears very chaotic. But when you look at all other human beings as beautiful, elegant biological machines embedded with sophisticated behavioral systems designed to align with others to maximize their chances for survival and replication, the task of understanding humanity and your place in it becomes surmountable. Not only was I myself a geek, but I've also taught the Mystery Method to other geeks! And you know what? They're not geeks anymore, and neither will you be. With me as your friend and guide, you'll start uploading Venusian arts programming into your behavioral system and then practice and internalize it so you won't have to think about picking up. It will just happen naturally when the moment arises. By reading this book, all you're doing is hanging out with a guy who figured it out. I figured it out. I know how. I know for a fact that I know how because I have a girlfriend. Along those same lines, this book also will work wonders for you if your relations with women have been hindered by your perception, true or not, that you're physically unattractive. In fact, you have less to worry about than the geek, because the "attraction circuits" of women are calibrated to find a man attractive not measured primarily by handsomeness or physique but rather by social value. It's not as much about looks as it is about conveying that you are the "tribal leader." Allow me to explain. A woman's job is to survive and replicate. To achieve those ends, she will align herself with anyone who can assist her in that survival and replication. The more S-and-R value the person has, the merrier. So the powerful leader of a tribe might be old, fat, and bald, but aligning with him will greatly improve her chances of survival and replication because of his power to protect her. To use a more modern-day analogy, how many times have you seen a gorgeous woman with a brick-house body on the arm of an older, hunched-over man who looks like he would need a forklift to get it up? You and I both know that guy owns a nightclub or some apartment buildings. He sure as hell isn't working at a car wash. So if you aren't the easiest guy on the eyes, I will show you how to become the "tribal leader" within your own family, community, and circle of friends. Even if it takes you several years to become one . . . that's what you have to be. If you're not a geek and you're not physically unattractive, but you fail in your efforts to seduce women because you're shy, don't worry. I, too, was shy. One of the great things about the Mystery Method is that, initially at least, you can hide behind stock routines and canned material, using them as tools for social dynamic interaction and the enjoyment of performing lighthearted social experiments. In this way, I will show you how to educate yourself and attain social intelligence. Being shy just means that you're scared to interact with other people. If you feel lonely, if you feel bad, those emotions exist for a purpose: to motivate you to improve your chances of survival and replication. You do that by aligning with other human beings who have S-and-R value. You're designed for social dynamic interaction; your brain is hardwired for you to be a social robot. Rooted in evolutionary behavioral psychology, the Mystery Method will help you align with your brain's design and work to break free of your shyness, improving your life dramatically. Like I said, I was very shy as a kid. Yet step-by-step, through countless approaches, I met more people and I started discovering the patterns of interaction--that there is a natural sequence of events that takes place in every such interaction. The more I learned about it, the more prepared I was, the less fear I had. That's what this book does: It prepares you to improve your life when you're ready, in a way and at a pace that's comfortable for and unique to you. That brings me, full circle, to my final point of this chapter: Why do I choose Casanova for my role model, as opposed to, say, Don Juan? After all, Don Juan is famous (or notorious, depending on your perspective) for having slept with thousands of women, while Casanova only had 122, by his own account. But the reason that I favor Casanova and he is still today so popular--his very name is now synonymous with seduction--is because he was picky. Casanova, on the one hand, had really nice, classy women. The fictional character Don Juan, on the other hand, was more like the literary equivalent of Wilt Chamberlain--he basically screwed anything that moved. So given the choice, I've had fewer women than I could have had because I say no far more than I say yes. On that note, turn the page and join me as we begin on your journey to pickup mastery. Copyright © 2007 by Mystery Method Corporation. Foreword copyright © 2007 by Neil Strauss. All rights reserved.
