Secular and stage: magic in this belief world

Secular and stage magic is the non-religious side of the subject: conjuring, illusion, mentalism and the scientific study of how people are fooled. It is honest deception, in which the audience knows it is a performance. The same field includes sceptics and psychologists who study belief. This page covers the performing art and the modern critical study of magic, and does not reveal how any trick is done. It also includes the long modern debate over belief and evidence.

The performing art

Stage magic grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from fairground conjuring into theatre. Robert-Houdin, Houdini, Kellar, P. C. Sorcar and many others built the modern show. Magic societies and conventions keep a craft tradition. The art is global, with performers from India, China, Japan, Latin America and Europe, though the field has long favoured Western men in its histories. Public figures such as Houdini, Randi and, more recently, Derren Brown have popularised the idea that tricks can look like psychic powers, and that audiences should know the difference.

Honest and dishonest

The central ethic is that a magician does not claim supernatural power. Mentalists work near that line. Those who claimed real power, such as spiritualist mediums, were exposed by magicians including Houdini. The distinction between entertainment and fraud is the guide's own working rule: if the audience consents to being fooled, it is a show. Magicians in Britain, India and America have campaigned for consumer protection against fraudulent psychics, and some have given evidence in court.

Science of illusion

Psychologists and neuroscientists collaborate with magicians to study attention and perception. Research on inattentional blindness and the misinformation effect owes something to this. Sceptical organisations, from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to local groups, investigate claims of psychic and healing powers and publish their findings. Performance of mentalism includes cold reading and suggestion, and honest performers announce that these are methods of entertainment and not supernatural gifts, a line that this guide tries to hold.

Who is in the room

Today the audience includes children's parties, television viewers and online followers. The art faces its own debates about inclusion, with more women and performers of colour, and about exposure on social media. Secular study of belief, including cognitive science of religion, treats magic as part of normal human thought. Seen from outside, secular magic shows that the pleasure of wonder does not depend on belief, and that curiosity and scepticism can go together.