THE SECRET(S) First, the preparation: I slip a queen of hearts into my right shoe, an ace of spades into my left, and a three of clubs into my wallet. Then I manufacture an entire deck out of duplicates of those three cards. That takes 18 decks, which is costly and tedious (No. 2: More trouble than it’s worth).
When I cut the cards, I let you glimpse a few different faces. You conclude the deck contains 52 different cards (No. 1: Pattern recognition). You draw and think you’ve made a choice (No. 7: Choice is not freedom).
Now I wiggle the card to my shoe (No. 3: If you’re laughing …). When I lift whichever foot has your card, or invite you to take my wallet from my back pocket, I turn away (No. 4: Outside the frame) and swap the deck for a normal one from which I’ve removed all three possible selections (No. 5: Combine two tricks). Then I set the deck down to tempt you to examine it later and notice your card is missing (No. 6: The lie you tell yourself).
Magic is an art, as capable of beauty as music, painting, or poetry. But the core of every trick is a cold, cognitive experiment in perception: Does the trick fool the audience? A magician’s data sample spans centuries, and his experiments have been replicated often enough to constitute near-certainty. Neuroscientists—well-intentioned as they are—are gathering soil samples from the foot of a mountain that magicians have mapped and mined for centuries. MRI machines are awesome, but if you want to learn the psychology of magic, you’re better off with Cub Scouts and hard candy.
