The other day I was watching this documentary on one of the cable documentary channels. They were outlining the history of magic, and magic tricks, starting way back in ancient Greece. The show was called “magic tricks revealed,” and they showed how that most magic tricks are nothing more than illusion, but not the kind of illusion that most people imagine. It’s mostly mental illusion rather than physical. Obviously if you studied a trick closely enough, you could see how it’s done. But the secret is to get your audience thinking along certain lines, that way you can easily fool them. That’s why magic has been so useful in the past.